Thoughts from a Techie

Tried Facebook's Year In Review function. Saw the obvious limitations of algorithms. Decided to write something of my own. For me, most of 2014's great moments came in December. Hands down my greatest personal achievement of the year (if not my whole entire life to this moment): finishing a half-M. Nothing beats the insane feeling when I crossed the finish line, especially given the equally insane circumstances - breakfast-less, sleep-deprived, and to a small extent, intoxicated (thanks to another great moment the day before. Too much greatness.) The logical progression is to have a shot at the M. Not too soon I guess, but at least I've already got a date to replicate the half-M. And of course this time the plan will include proper sleep and breakfast and zero alcohol. Shortly after comes IHG. First time playing real competitive football with a bunch of awesome folks who always score in the last 10 minutes. The comeback kings, or more formally known as Pioneer Hall...

Pre-exam de-stress. For the better half of this year, I've been enjoying the comfort of home - that is staying close to the people I love most in this world and having access to cheap 3G. How cheap? Well in prepaid terms there are a few plans, the most limited is 50MB for 10,000VND (just slightly over .50). I picked just that. Here's how I survived. 1. Use an Android. Since the introduction of 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, data limiting is built in to Settings. And since most Androids out there are running 4.x, we're off to a good start. 2. Use that setting. There are two main settings to take note - setting limits & disable background data. First, set the "red" limit to the bandwidth cap i.e. 50MB. Then set the "orange" limit to slightly lower e.g 40MB. Most important, DISABLE BACKGROUND DATA. Because when you only have 50MB, every random sync counts. That takes care of "passive" data draining. How about "active"?...

Today's a pretty special day. It's been exactly 5 years since I first set foot on this island. For this, I've decided to do something pretty special. At this very moment I'm composing a blog post on my phone for the first time. And I'm on my way to NUS to join my brothers for a little celebration. Trying my best to smoothen the mobile writing experience... by taking the longest possible route out of NTU - a few rounds of CL-Red followed by Weekend Rider. About two years back when Tumblr was still my favorite blogging platform, I wrote a "3 years and counting" post. Luckily I haven't decided to take down my Tumblr; and while I prepared stuff to write this, I decided to take a look. Most of the photos I used back then was hosted elsewhere and no longer accessible, so I was left with a rather short block of text, detailing some of the great memories I had with people. And indeed it's the people I've come to know that made the last 5 year...

Just finished my lunch and got half an hour left to a group project meeting. Figured I could squeeze some time for a short story. Not entirely NTU-related but I'm still tagging it as such. So the other day my friend and I were having a group project meeting (not the same project as half an hour later). It's a paired assignment for Engineering Communications where we are required to submit a technical proposal. Being the Microsoft Office expert I am, I showed her how to use the APA reference features in Word, which I learned during my Project Work days in JC. And the conversation subject naturally switched to my PW project. And when it comes to a PW project, the most representative document would be the Written Report. Of course all my PW materials are long gone from my hard drive so I relied on my 5 years and counting of Gmail archives. Sure enough it was there. Written report 18 Oct OFFICIAL.docx. Turned out the structure of our WR has much in common with the structu...

It's been an insanely busy few weeks thanks to what happened during part 2 and assignments & projects starting to kick in. It's university life, deal with it. Still need to keep writing nonetheless. So far the series have been delayed by 2 weeks and counting but anyways here's part 3. Part 3: Cooking. Another cost cutting measure. Since I started living in NTU when meals were concerned I had always followed this schedule: breakfast at home - 4 slices of bread with jam/ whatever bread spread I had available & a cup of milk with cereal; lunch at school canteen wherever's convenient; dinner at Canteen 1/2, depending on whether I needed to get supplies afterwards (which often includes bread and spread). Not too shabby at all. Breakfast was full, lunch was enjoyable especially when I could afford the time and effort to get to NIE canteen and enjoy the $3 specials from the Chinese store plus friends are always awesome; dinner was replenishing. But it didn...

7h sáng ngủ 11h dậy. Ăn sáng đến 12h thấy trời man mát đầu ngao ngáo lại lên giường ngủ tiếp đến 3h rưỡi chiều. Thấy bao nhiêu người tag ảnh & tag mình vào các post và comment sến, máu sến nổi lên, mất 1 tiếng đi liên hệ lấy con lenovo bị bỏ rơi ở LKC hôm qua về chỉ để viết mấy dòng... sến. Phần 2: 2/9. Thực ra thì cái series này mình phải viết xong trong vòng 2 ngày kể từ bài đầu tiên (posted chủ nhật tuần trc). Đã plan sẵn mọi thứ từ trước rồi mà. Nhưng ở đời thì mấy ai theo được plan. Thứ 6 là làm 2/9, mà đã làm 2/9 thì phải rực rỡ =)) Thế là gần như ngày nào cũng thức đêm. Mà thức chủ yếu là vì log comm. Nói thật mình yêu anh em log comm vl. Em yêu anh Hùng Fly vl. Mặc dù là cụm trưởng phải đi lo cho toàn bộ các công việc liên quan đến 2/9 của cụm nhưng anh vẫn dành thời gian đi làm log với em. Vẫn còn nhớ ngày hôm ấy đi mua đồ làm log quên cả thời gian về muộn không đến được meeting của team liaison gọi điện xin lỗi chị Bình xin chị cho em đến muộn một tí không ngờ res...

This post is a significant one. Why? Because this is the first one I write on my shiny new laptop. More on that later. As the title suggests, lots of things are going on in my life at the moment. Everything is in full swing: studies, ECAs, even the "other" things. Extremely busy. Much of the development, however, happened in the span of the last 4-5 days. I'll split my post into many parts, each part on a certain development. Part 1: Cycling. The most significant development in my opinion. I have always wanted to get a bike. Two main reasons: good exercise; and the more important one, my pocket - my need to travel costs me quite some money. Imagine just a simple task of grocery shopping at Jurong Point takes me .77 a leg (or 1.54 a round trip). And I make such trips every other day. Then a good soul saved the day. A good friend/ senior sold me his (largely) unused bike for $80. First ride is always the most memorable. This first ride had the distinction of bei...