Ways to Stay Awake and Focused Without Caffeine

I’ve been doing some pretty hard times trying to put together a beta release for Neely’s venture. And since caffeine and I don’t really mix well, and through trial and errors, I’ve discovered a few ways to keep at it without external chemical stimulants (that work for me anyway)… Besides, I think chemical stimulants are just for the weak-minded… 😉

1. Take a shower — this helps to keep me stay awake for at least until that ‘freshness” wears off (about an hour or two?).

2. Keep the stomach full — it’s amazing what an empty stomach does to the morale. By having late night (or early morning, depending on how you want to look at it) semi-meals, I can plow through quite a bit of code more clear-headed. Maybe the stomach protests hunger by telling the brain to shut down in order to conserve energy.

3. Get lots of rest prior to “the long haul” — people don’t realize how tiring it is when the brain is bitch-slapped for hours on end for attention intensive tasks like programming. So sometimes I do activities that are relaxing and don’t require the brain for a while, like playing with Bryan for 20 minutes.

4. Get up and walk around about once every 30 minutes just to get the blood flowing.

5. Drop and do some push ups.

6. When “in the zone”, stay in the zone. DO NOT STOP until you can barely keep your eyelids open. Sometimes I stay in the zone even when I am asleep. All my dreams would be about how to solve particular programming problems I’d gone to bed with — pretty freaky.

7. Power nap for 15 minutes — this is usually followed by a quick shower. All this before diving into code.

Starting usually at around 2AM, I’ve managed to stay up until around noon of the same day by doing these things. And they seem to work well for me personally. I mean, I’ve tried coffee and even RedBull. But they just make me super duper hyper that I end up not being able to concentrate at all. So I guess my body just isn’t made for coffee…

Of Politics and Taiwan

It’s been a while since I wrote about Taiwan. And suddenly I am feeling like writing an entry.

The KMT won an overwhelming victory in securing parliamentary seats in Taiwan this week. And for the first time in eight years, I glance a ray of hope again for Taiwan’s future. But it’s not all rosy for an island that’s been deserted by the world of international politics for almost 50 years.

Just to get it out there, I am pro-KMT in many ways. I like their economic policies as well as their philosophies on how Taiwan should be governed, particularly in relations to China. But I am also skeptical of KMT’s stance on the question of Taiwan’s sovereignty.

There’s no question that Taiwan (or if you really want to be picky, The Republic of China) is a sovereign “nation” with its own everything — constitution, president, parliament, currency… etc. And there’s no question in my mind that if put to a vote (without threats from China, obviously), a good majority of Taiwanese would prefer to go independence rather than become part of China’s smallest province no matter how China guarantees the island its self-autonomy.

And to the best of my understanding, one main reason that Taiwan is still a political orphan of the world (in that very few dares to recognize it as a country) is because most of the leaders of all other “freedom” and “democracy” loving countries are just a bunch of hypocrites. For example, why the U.S. sells outdated arms to Taiwan at exceptionally high prices to Taiwan if it thinks Taiwan is part of China (well, actually I know why; but just to get the point across)? If the rest of the world recognizes that Taiwan is only a renegade province of China, why do they allow Taiwanese passports through their customs? But then, if Taiwan IS a country, why is almost every single nation in the world so against Taiwan in joining the United Nations? And why doesn’t every country recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation and allow Taiwan to have its own embassies with proper diplomatic relations?

I suppose Taiwan can declare independence. And in doing so starting a revolution that’d probably end in massive massacres of its people by the Red Army, only to find out that nobody cared if it was independent in the first place. In a world of high expectations in justice and democracy, I find it ironic and cynical that the same expectations aren’t extended to Taiwan and its people — a people that, despite all odds of being orphaned and rejected, achieved one of the most successful economic miracles of modern history — and did it all by itself with no political assistance or any kind of natural resources to speak of.

I still don’t really know what my position is in terms of independence. But even without declaring independence, I mean, honestly, isn’t Taiwan already independent? Just because China wants the rest of the world to look the other way doesn’t dislodge that fact — or does it?

Bookshelf

Sixteen years ago, living in Thailand, I didn’t really have any collection of books. What my dad had in the study room was what I read, albeit most books were political in nature (which is probably why I have been so keen in politics since).

Fast forward to the late 90’s when I was an art student, I actually started to have a small collection of books — arts (of course) and many philosophical in nature (my “soul searching” days, like the kind my brother is experiencing right now).

When I moved from New York City to the Golden State, I essentially ditched all those “soul searching” and literature arts stuff. Well, partially it was because I got married (what more is there to search for?), and another reason was that a totally different part of the brain took over — I started getting more interested in programming, web development and Linux server administration. And as a result, my book collections grew accordingly. You know you’ve met a geek when you see a shelf full of books with programming and other geeky goodies.

Now, after four and half years, the pendulum has swung back to other hemisphere of the brain (the half that makes society civilized and bearable) — arts. So I’ve slowly started ditching and donating my tech books. In their place, the shelf is slowly being filled with books of arts related topics.

Now if only I have the time to actually read through each and everyone of them from cover to cover like Brian seemingly to be able to do… then life would be all good.

SOHO Woes

I love working for myself and working from home. The amount of freedom and flexibility is surreal. This makes me not ever want to go back to a 9 to 5 (or 6, or 7, or 10) job ever again. But it does have its trade offs.

I’ve been working pretty feverishly on Neely’s digital signage project for a while. But it seems to take forever to get something done nowadays. Compared to some of my previous code-heavy projects, this is really taking a long time! And the only difference I’ve noticed is — Bryan’s age.

Before Bryan walked and talked, everything was simple then. Grace was able to handle most of Bryan’s needs. But now that Bryan’s almost 2.5 years old, the amount of attention required to satisfy his needs is amazingly time consuming. So what used to take me to finish a block of code before will now triple in time and effort just to get things moving along in the presence of Bryan. And when he does go to bed, I also need to wind down before I could get in the “zone” to get things going.

For the past few days, I’ve been going to bed at 10AM (after working through the night). Before that, my effective work hours have been between 2AM to 6AM. Yes, it’s only four hours, but boy, when nobody is around to bug you, things get done!

This is probably good when the new baby finally arrives because that’d make me the de facto night-shift guard. But wait, that’ll mean it’d take me even longer to get shit done even during my “alone time”… Oh crap!

More of What Is to Come?

Today, I am going to shoot my first photo gig for 2008! I am excited! I hope I’ll get some of that luck from the newborn twins I am shooting…

I am going to try to replace most of my income this year with photography. Thanks to Brian for all his help with my portfolio site. Now if only I can find the time to fix the last few things on the site then I’d be all set to start printing those promo cards that Brian has graciously shared his ideas with me on.

2008, here I come!

Rediscovering Simplicity

I’ve been sweating bullets with this project I’ve been working on with Neely — he’s supposed to be demoing it at a major conference in New York with a partner in a couple of weeks. But I am still not quite where I’d like to be in terms of polish and grace.

Neely’s been telling me to just code for the immediate requirements and nothing more. But my philosophy has always been to look ahead just a little more and prepare for what’s to come as “no-brainer” feature requests. Apparently this type of thinking has been hurting my development time on this project…

I rarely read Wil Shipley’s blog entries because they are usually quite long and sometimes very technical. But just out of the blue I decided to read “something” today. And there I came across his coding strategy and philosophy on coding for only what’s necessary and nothing more.

I’ve always understood the idea of “push it out to the market first and fix it later”… But I just never felt right implementing that in good conscience knowing that I am purposely releasing a faulty software only to fix it when complaints flood in. But the way Wil explained it made a lot of sense to me and I think I am going to make what he says in that article my focus from now on — if there ain’t complaints, it ain’t broke. And if there ain’t requests, it ain’t a useful feature.

Live and learn…

Another Year

It seems that every year starts with a lot of hope and aspiration but only to end it with a lot of new hope and aspiration waiting for another year to begin…

And of course, this year is no different. I have a few “resolutions” in mind… only if I have the time to actually think them through and write them down… Hmm, I should put down “eliminate procrastination” on my list of resolutions… Check.