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Big bang theory and futurama. Geeeeee(k)

October 6, 2008 | Author: Vinh

I like to see myself as a geek.
After all I imagined an algorithm, and I am about to sell it to the world. (Wheeeeeee) (Thank you french labs for your help).

Then I like to tell stupid geeky jokes.

Like:

How can you tell that someone is a computer nerd?
He tells you that 1kg is not 1000g.

A constant function and exp(x) are in the streets.
There’s a signpost indicating that a derivate function is around.
The constant function says “Sorry mate, gotta leave”.
Exp(x) smiles, knowing no fear of the derivate function.
Exp(x) encounters an unknown function.
“Hi! I’m exp(x)”
The unknow function answers:
“Hi! I’m d/dy()”

Hrmmmmmmm

Come on guys, laugh, I’m feeling lonely here.
Anyway, just wanted to tell you that Big Bang theory is back, and that it’s as good as ever. Nope the blonde is no longer with that weird guys. And quantum loops and strings are still to be decided.

As well, here’s an article in wired that blew my mind.
Who would think someone would try to calculate Fermat’s near misses to fool out viewers. I don’t know, but I did not know there was so much brain behind that show.

I guess 42 is not the answer to everything.
I guess watching dumb shows is a good hobby, and there’s nothing to do but smile, when you realize you’ve killed some precious time.

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Nanani Nanana… I want to read about YOU. In french.

October 1, 2008 | Author: Vinh

That’s what Anna told me.

She said “Your blog is boring. It’s about internet stuff, and I don’t care about that. I’d like you to talk about your chicks and your life. Preferrably in french.”

Yup.
It’s true that most of the traffic I get are for my french posts.
It’s true that most of the people I know say they’d rather have me write in French.
It’s true that I like internet stuff, and I am brainwashed with readwriteweb or copyblogger linguo and guidelines.

I can’t say she’s wrong. Readers are never wrong. Especially, when she cooks for ya. I know, I’m a lazy ass.

However.
Just wanted this to be said again.
I just don’t feel like writing about things that are too personal.
-Do you really care about how I pick-up girls in bars?
-Do you really care about my hard drive failure (uh-oh- guess I told you about that.)
-Do you really care about the fact that the smell in my office is still the smell of fresh furniture?

And I don’t know… sometimes, I still fantacize about a recruiter reading those lines and making me lose all my credibility.

Anna told me… “Write about how you feel!”
Chick-talk. I feel bored, cause I don’t want to change the language of my blog every now and then. I feel stupid cuz I can’t change my CSS and don’t take the time for it.
I feel good, cuz my start-up is going well.

I feel good, cuz I’m going to the restaurant tonight. I am going to eat FlammeKueche (Alsacian Pizza), and I am thinking I should by some new toothbrush cuz the last one looks like a spider.
I sometimes buy a happy meal and a cheeseburger. I find it an interesting combo, seeing that I get a toy with that, a dessert, hamburgers, a drink, fries…

Well, looks like I can’t make it interesting enough… :(

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Isolated

September 29, 2008 | Author: Vinh

Alone in my apartment.
The only windows I see, is the one showing a scary outside. With “Trees”.
I have put some cheese on my door to find a working mouse.

My eyes are going into screensaver and I find it hard to switch to the wireless network.

Saturday, my computer crashed.
Windows not starting. Fear of data loss.
Could not connect. Could not connect.
F8.L repair. Dell. XPS MP1330. DST 2000-0146. Replace your hard drive.
Yours is dead. RIP.

As I see my old hard drive turning and turning, going down as I flush the toilets, I see those memories we shared together.
250 gigs of myself. My work. MSN contacts, Facebook passwords, ebooks…

You have had a great life hard drive.

O where thou leave me?
Maybe thy life is commodity!

You’ll be replaced Hard Drive!
Fatal Failure can get you, but if it gets you, another one will come.
And another one will come. Then it is pretty much the end of my warranty.

Without you, Hard drive,
I could not contact the chinese. They worked 2 days without my supervision.
Guess what monster has been derived from my project?
What can happen in 2 days?
Has my widget turned dragon?
Into a Flying Kite of mystery?

Hard drive.
Tomorrow, you’ll be replaced. Dell technician said you’d be brand as new.
No you’re not the very same hard drive. But you’ll keep on fullfilling your Hard Drive destiny : helping people download porn on their computer.

I will see your guts wide open.
I will laugh at you. Give you the finger.
But inside. Deep inside (Intel). I know I’ve lost 250 gigs of memory.

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Dealing with nights and week-ends

September 24, 2008 | Author: Vinh

JB is getting married in 2010.
Jose found a new girlfriend.
Robin has moved in with his girlfriend.
Hyung-Jo has had his first baby quite some time now.

It’s getting harder and harder to find people I can go to McDonald’s with, with last minute notice. Freedom is different when you think as a group of 2.

Well I believe in monogamy (not the board game with the hotels and stuff), but a startup sure is a jealous girlfriend.

Today, I was so busy I was coding during the red light in the traffic.
I see my savings shringking down, giving me less opportunities to interact in a social manner with long time dear friends.
Last time, I was so into writing the BP, I came 30 minutes late. And yes, that is a big deal for me.
I never used to be late.

As my e-mails stack in my mailbox, I forget to reply to old friends or to new acquaintances I really wanted to get to know.
I never understood, why someone could not answer. Now I know.

I feel that thoses months do not fly by.
It seems like a year I left Airbus, to have my own startup. Hope this will come to a happy ending.

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eBook-o-limia

September 22, 2008 | Author: Vinh

I counted the number of ebooks I read this week.
It’s about 15-20.

You will say:
“Where did you find the time?”
“Where do you find them?”
“Do you really read them?”

Well I find the time where it is, the books where they are, and hell yes, I read them.

Think about that:
That guy spent 50 years travelling around the world and met countless number of people.
He lived situations that I never would have thought about and might have become the man I have always wanted to be.

And he summarized all that in 70 pages.
Of course, one life is not a one book.

But then again, I realize a lot of things, and experienced things I would have never seen abroad.

Good Will Hunting’s movie starred Matt Damon who could talk about anything he’s read in a book. Robin William’s would say something like “You could talk about the Sixtine Chapelle, but you’d never know how it feels like to be there, the smell around…”

True. How true. But, there are lots of things that you need to experience…
But when it comes to learning something, guidelines are COOL!
When you can’t afford or can’t find a teacher, you can learn ANYTHING.
(even learn to learn, learn to unlearn, and all of those two faster)

I started reading things about speed reading, business sales, online marketing, and when I found the reference book (domain specific bibles), I found the backbone for my knowledge. The rest naturally came into place, where it belongs.

Now I’ve downloaded 52 gigs on criminality, survival, lockpicking, ninja stuff, hypnosis, car tuning and manuscript writing.

I think I just need to know stuff for the sake of knowing them.
Wow, just today I added 5 words in my japanese vocabulary.

Sayonara!

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e-learning Japanese ? Iknow!

September 12, 2008 | Author: Vinh

Full Metal Panic? FumoffuImage via Wikipedia My life has changed.

After years of watching Japanese animes, I never learnt to speak japanese.
That was a terrible waste of time.

I remember watching Full metal panic Fumoffu!, with the eyes stuck on the subtitles, feeling that somehow I was missing all the fun.
I always thought I should learn japanese, but it always came second in my list of prorities as compared to chinese. (I mean sheer population numbers speak for themselves).

So when i saw japanese e-learning popping out in my RSS reader, I said “Hey!, that’s something for me”. I never thought that with 2 days since I discovered the service, I would have practiced 3 hours of japanese, know 50 words at 20%, and begin to actually grasp a few words in the animes.

The service is Iknow!. And is delivering what it should.
A simple, addictive e-learning device.

With all that time I spent on labrute.fr playing stupid game, now I can spend it on something useful. -if you consider learning japanese is something useful.

E-learning has always been something that was promising.
Now with that service coming up, I can not wait until we have that in chinese.

And guess what?
I’d be ready to PAY for that.
Yes, you heard me.

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Mapping your life helps storytelling for self promotion

September 8, 2008 | Author: Vinh

Yeah, that’s quite a complicated title.
But I think that’s the accurate one.

While we were practicing some routines on people, trying to get to integrate groups, we tried to get people to talk more about themselves.
“What do you think about it?”
“Have you ever lived something like that?”

Did not work as planned. Some groups were really responsive and eager to talk about themselves. Canned openers such as “Know any cool places to hang around?” open the groups, but do not help transitionning.

We tried the “How do you guys know each other?” but when it came too soon, it wouldn’t work that well.

That’s where we thought about the power of storytelling.

A good story makes you the focus of the group. Deliver 100 times. Do it better and better, until you can observe the reactions while telling the story. Calibrate your message.

But what story?
Since people don’t know you. It should be about you.
It should be a story that tells people that you’re cool.

Do you have any of those stories?
Yes. Otherwise you would not be interesting enough to read my blog.

- Remember when you saw those kids being attacked by a grizzli bear and that you bare-handedly took care of it?
- Remember when you were on the beach playing Bob marley music on the guitar, near a fire, with chicks digging your style?
- You get the point

But which one would you use?
Just mind map. Use the central concept of ME. Try to recall all of those stories and get them on your mind maps. Then this is your visual plan.

For example: at one point of the conversation, you naturally come to subject of booze. (that’s an easy one, and you should back it up).
That’s right you already have a story for that, that will Demonstrate Higher social Value. (DHV)

Random guy/chick: Oh boy, do I love Heineken.

1)
Me: Beer? I remember when I was at the Heineken museum in Amsterdam. I learnt that the “e” of Heineken is smiling, “Have you noticed?”

or

If you look there, (showing the bottle), you have the 5 pillars of brewery. Those are…

or

I remember, when I was at that Heineken museum, that we got free drinks. OMG, I was so wasted in the end.

2)
Me: Did you know that beer had feminine hormones?
Yup after 2 pints, you can’t stop talking, and you can’t drive properly.

You get the idea? Good.
Use that wisely :)

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Social graph applied to corporate e-mails…

August 29, 2008 | Author: Vinh

While reading Stephen Baker blog promoting his book, the numerati… I stumbled across a very interesting idea.

Using social graph on corporate e-mails!

Yes!
Stephen Baker talks about a subject that is very close to my heart: modeling human behavior.
Studying all the IBM workers, he can finally put them into a quantitative model of the world.
Efficiency, Knowledge, Sociability, Charisma, everything is finally rated.

You can then design the best training courses, optimize the resources, and put up a virtual assembly line, considering all people like resources and applying the latest of operational research in logistics.

One of the striking example was the social graphs.

Imagine if you drew all the interactions between people as they send e-mails, you would understand the dynamics behind the workplace.
You would see people who work alone, those who are team players, those who can NOT work alone.
Then you would see managers who don’t report enough, and studying the keywords, you would understand the fundamentals of each community.

That really killed me. We know how to do this already. We can put it in practice at a corporate level.

Finally, being spied at the work place and knowing that my e-mails are read, I will think twice about sending those, and add some viscosity in the process, therefore slowing down the process.
I will call people more than write them. (until they spy our phones with speech to text technology).

Privacy is now our biggest challenge.
Being spied should never become something natural.

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The use of proven openers to meet people

August 28, 2008 | Author: Vinh

When you try to meet people, at various occasions – including picking up girls, you have got to say something first.

Apart from Chuck Norris, whose pick-up line is “NOW”, mortals like me have to settle for something that is somewhat more indirect.

I remember I used to collect pick-up lines because they were fun:

-My name is Ly. Vinh Ly.
-I lost my phone number, can I have yours?
-Nice shoes, wanna f*ck?

Of course, I would never apply them, because they don’t really help for sustaining a conversation afterwards.
Most of the time, I would try to gather knowledge of the target, through observation or network.

“Hey Fred, you know that girl over there? Tell me something about her, I need to talk to her”
and you follow to her with
“Hi, I was just talking about horse-riding with Fred and he’s just told me you’re really into it as well… what a coincidence!”

Those informed openers are the ones I like best. Because, it’s customized. Because, it has required an effort from my side.

But there are some sort of proven openers, that we know would work well.

With a friend, we went on the street, and tested one of them with a set of 10 groups we opened with a proven opener. Always the same.

Guess what?
It works.
The groups say the same thing, they get involved in the conversation, and you opened the group.
In the end, it became so boring to use the same old stuff, and it was quite disturbing to see the same old trick work with nearly everyone.

We’re just all the same.

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We are value-driven robots.

August 25, 2008 | Author: Vinh

Yup.
I realized it some time ago.

Saying that everyone is different would be a truism.
Saying that people have different values would be a truism as well.

Naturally, as I am telling that to you, you feel that you have experienced that before.
You remember those neverending arguments about something that did not even came close to what you thought you would care about.

Yeah people think differently.
Coming back to the root of all evil is what our experience of the world is.

I remember an argument about two people, whether a divorce between the two parents was a “good” or “bad” thing for the child.
No “good” or “bad” answers. Different contexts. Therefore different values.
One is “Protect the integrity of the family for the child”
One is “Get rid of that tensed atmosphere by seperating”

And behind those values, only positive intention.

ALWAYS believe that there is positive intention.
We’re just so messed up we forgot how to communicate.
We’re asked to play perfectly with a badly tuned violin.

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