See you guys a week later.

I don’t have my itinerary fixed yet, would love to see the startup and software development scene if it’s possible. I do user interfaces (UI) development in Singapore.

My first day would be spend going to Tsukiji. It should be fun. I’m already excited.

If you do know anyone there that I can meet up with, buzz me!

Each time that phrase is uttered, it suggests the speaker has somewhat accepted what has occurred which should be a good thing until he or she starts to get everyone to accept like he or she did.

It is of course what it is; there’s no way it is what it is not. Unless there’s a bloody misunderstanding in which case it STILL is what it is because you just don’t know that your interpretation of the event is unreliable. Yet.

I propose search phrases to be left out. And I’m not trying to be a smart aleck. I hated the resignation of this statement. We are always taught to assess the present situation and make a move. If things don’t go right we assess on its remedy. We can still try to correct things for what it is now to make for a better outcome.

You know the feeling of being so busy that all you care about is your immediate goals and you think to yourself, “hey taxes can come on the April 18?” That’s what that made me delay the whole tax filing thing. These are little chores in life that serves to haunt you for the rest of your life. It makes me feel better after I stopped questioning things such as, “why don’t we pay taxes after five years, then I only have to pay twenty times if I live to a hundred twenty,” and accepted it as part of life.

Other annoyances include insurance premiums and credit card bills. Again I stress how little you really need your credit cards. Don’t get so many cards and have a fat wallet. I’m getting rid of one card this coming week. My mistake to apply for it, damn Citibank has amazing coercion techniques. Not a compliment, sentiment analysis engine.

1. Google Whatsapp

Rumor has it that Google’s acquiring Whatsapp. Had a quick conversation over this this evening and it’s a sensible choice for Google. Even if it is 1 billion. Google has not been fast enough to jump into messaging and the other companies are taking over. LINE and WeChat has been especially popular in Asia and Google’s probably finding this hard to ignore. If Google does get Whatsapp, I can imagine improvements to it. I love to watch for SMS integration in this, especially for the iPhone.

2. ChannelNewsAsia has a new design

Woah new design. It definitely a great improvement. The new site takes some getting used to but this is a great step forward. They are a couple of jarring mistakes, more on the choice of colors and there’s some awkward color decisions. I do not think the trend graph is sensible too. Love the bigger images and larger text.

3. Mad Men

I’m watching Mad Men this month and advertising is such an interesting industry. I thank Grace for getting me to watch this. If you’re looking for some drama to watch, this is something.

4. On web design in general

Web design has evolved so fast that tools can’t keep up. I find that designers are painstakingly using Photoshop to work on their designs and there’s no way Photoshop can express responsive layouts. Designers can probably imagine how the layout would change in their minds but it’s too tedious to create mockups. In the bigger design houses, some designers got their hands dirty and do HTML and CSS to just design directly. I think that has to be the way at some point of time. The web designer title is evolving. I see this as an interim though, perhaps tools will catch up and allow designers to express web designs better. Seriously designing a whole website in Photoshop or InDesign is making lesser sense these days. (Note: I’m a web user interface developer.)

5. Grunt.js

Grunt.js is such a joy to use, I’ve been automating some LESS.js and minification tasks at work and it’s making me happier leaving these highly repeatable task to this wonderful tool. I’m starting to use this more efficiently and have introduced this to my colleagues at Tremor Video as well. It’s a slightly different workflow as what we are doing but definitely worthy of further exploration.

6. My best 50 bucks spent

I’ve been bring the phone charger and adapter back and forth for months. One day I bought a set to keep it at home and have my existing set at work. The new adapter at home charges both my Apple iPhone 5 as well as the Amazon Kindle together. I now have one less thing to think about when going home from work. That freed me to think about under things and I swear this reduces my overall stress. Consider getting yourself a set of these too.

7. The curse of credit cards

The curse is to watch out for payments. I’ve been scalded once, OCBC charged me 60 dollars for late payment for 20 bucks. That upset me. I have 8 credit cards today and I only use 2 regularly. I know what to do. I’m just waiting for the time I can cancel without a penalty. I recommend everyone to have as little credits cards as possible. Forget about the dinner discounts, they’re limiting your dinner choices anyway.

8. Roger Ebert, RIP

Roger Ebert died at age 70 after battle with cancer (Sun Times). Ebert, 70, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years, and who was without question the nation’s most prominent and influential film critic, died Thursday in Chicago. He’s one of the best writers I admire. Have a look at this article that’s not movie related.

In order to add the syntax highlight for CoffeeScript #{} in strings, for example:

c.url("#{vhaAppAddress}saaa", done)

Open up your .tmTheme file and add the following lines:

        <dict>
            <key>name</key>
            <string>Embedded Source</string>
            <key>scope</key>
            <string>string source, text source</string>
            <key>settings</key>
            <dict>
                <key>fontStyle</key>
                <string></string>
                <key>foreground</key>
                <string>#9bca3c</string>
                <key>background</key>
                <string>#444</string>
            </dict>
        </dict>

You can change the colors of background and foreground to your liking too. Hope you’ll find this useful!

See the gallery

I wish the WordPress gallery does more of a zooming in and out thing. That would be really useful.

When I was starting do go into programming from doing freelancing on design, my morale is probably at the lowest. It’s been the most discouraging year perhaps. Everybody would go how simple it really is, just do this and this. Some would give suggestion of some super big framework that totally addresses your problem and more.

But. No one, no one, showed me how to do it. No one has any intention to. Perhaps it’s too simple, perhaps it will take too long of their time.

The dirty secret

There’s a vast difference between being able to imagine how to code something and actually making use of the tool to code it. Great programmers can imagine the intricacies of the task and have a good plan how to attack it. Helpful programmers can lead you to completion.

Most programmers underestimated the task at hand and trivialize the task. Why? Because they want to get the feeling of having conquered the problem in their minds without actually doing it. You get the same elated feeling when you do that. Not knowing what you cannot do will make you less disappointed with yourself. Programmers trivialize things to make themselves feel better.

Some programmers want to use your asking for help as a platform to show off how well-read they are too. They tell of a library you never heard of and claim how easy it is to get things done there but not how to achieve that for your task at hand.

Explain your rejection

In many ways, if you are a programmer and you do that, what you are doing is rejecting to help someone. If so, say it directly. I sometimes have to say this is a laborious task and I don’t have the time to guide you through. If there’s a tutorial that I can easily find, I send it to the person to get started too. I think people appreciate the truth. Either help them all the way or lead them to get help from some other source. Be encouraging. I won some friends this way.

Never say it’s really simple.

1. Marriage equality, same-sex

Ruling that same sex marriage is unconstitutional in America. The New Yorker has a good summary on the key arguments for same-sex marriage.

There really is very little you can argue against same sex marriage without sounding like a selfish jerk.

2. Dog loves guitar

This is too cute to not watch:

Dogs make me laugh.

3. White noise to increase your creativity

This is a website with audio that mimics a cafe. Some Singaporeans would say they get more productive at Starbucks or the likes. Really? Perhaps so. Research has suggested some white noise to be good for creativity. Although I don’t really believe the assessment, here’s a coffee shop background sound you may need one day.

4. On why I start not reading news news

At some point of time in my life, I realized it’s just impossible to catch up with all the news in the world. They are things that are nice to know that is happening but I argue that it is less important than you think. Important news come to you in the old fashion way — word of mouth.

Today’s mainstream news is filled with articles that embraces the negative aspects. There’s always an accident here, a murder case, embezzlement etc.. There just isn’t enough good news except for our Prime Minister planting a lovely bush at the gardens to commemorate some special day that the generation in the future will call history.

News isn’t all that bad though. Just read lesser. For me, it’s a lot lesser. And stop reading about mishaps of others and surround yourself with more positivity. Read social news briefly. Then do your stuff in life. Don’t ever read The Straits Times.

5. The worst URL

Channel News Asia wins this hands down. What is this:

www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporebusinessnews/view/1262412/1/.html

I’m talking about /.html.

Come on, you can do better than this. What kind of CMS output such garbage?!

All is great until I found that WordPress’s basic install has so much that I can take advantage of that I am not. It became weighing between having access to these features or coding my theme to as such it allows for these features. I decided it really is writing I want to do here and the theme can take a secondary position for the time being. I would love to be working on it when time permits.

It’s really back to basics this time. Enjoy reading.