For the next couple of weeks (and for the last few days) I'll be doing my yearly national service. It's not something I particularly look forward to, but after I'm doing with it I'm often quite thankful for the opportunity to have been able to do it. It's something like a hard run in the... Continue Reading →
A kindler, gentler philosophy of success
A great talk by one of my favourite authors Alain de Botton, speaking on success. A quote that I absolutely love, from the talk: The next time you see someone driving a Ferrari, don't think this is somebody who's greedy. Think of this as somebody who's incredibly vulnerable, and in need of love.
Confounding and the measurement of the MRT off peak initiative
The Singapore government announced a while back that they were going to start an initiative to try to reduce peak period crowds on our public rail system or MRT (Mass Rapid Transit). The initiative involved providing free and subsidised travel for passengers on selected trips during the morning off-peak period. This initiative kicked off two... Continue Reading →
Singapore hits a record high PSI
Singapore has been experiencing a terrible bout of haze lately, with record-setting PSI of 371 recorded earlier this afternoon. The haze had been, in the beginning, quite a welcome break from the dull monotony of everyday Singapore life. I'd even followed PSI readings as closely as punters would the weekly 4D results. But as it drags... Continue Reading →
On theory, practice, and Snowflake Schemas
Just the other day I learnt that the data warehouse I was working on was designed using a Star and Snowflake schema. I'd known enough about them to know that this meant the data was set up on fact and "dimensional" tables, but not much other than that. So the moment I had some time... Continue Reading →
Student loans and how the deed is infinitely stronger than the word
Interesting article giving the perspectives of three people with outstanding student loans and how they're paying it off. I'd never been that heavily in debt and I do sometimes wonder what I'd do. Though I cannot say for sure, I do not see myself holding off the payment of loans if I could I help... Continue Reading →
The need for discomfort
If life was comfortable all the time, we wouldn't learn a damn thing. I do wish it would be otherwise. Give me the lesson without the associated pain of learning. But no. Life has to be hard if it is to be worthwhile.
Getting Real by 37Signals
In what must be one of the most serendipituous moments of my recent life I hit upon 37Signals' Getting Real TOC page after doing a search of a string of text that randomly entered my mind. (The whole book's available online for free? Wow!) I'd first read Getting Real in its physical form (borrowed from a local... Continue Reading →
Building an Antifragile System
I just completed the testing of a new program I wrote. 500 lines of well-commented code, making debugging easy if necessary. With this program, the reports we run daily in the morning would take 10 minutes instead of the usual hour, and fully-automated too. Without any manual inputs, the potential failure points owing to manual... Continue Reading →
On antifragility and new stuff
Taleb once again scores with me with his book on “antifragility”. Like his book on randomness and black swans, this book has opened my mind to a concept that I’ve intuitively felt but never been able to put down in words. I wrote once about “destroying things” to love them more – making new things... Continue Reading →
Donn, fragments 