Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Insight into Networking and Scaling
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Flow - Inspiration #4: Design
Designing a software (p. 72):
"What makes these activities conducive to flow is that they were designed to make optimal experience easier to achieve. They have rules that [1] require the learning of skills, they [2] set up goals, they [3] provide feedback, they [4] make control possible."
Flow - Inspiration #3: User Enjoyment
Understanding the below should help us better to understand user enjoyment so that we can design a software that will encompass some of the philosophy (p. 46):
"Enjoyable events occur when a person has not only met some prior expectations or satisfied a need or a desire but also gone beyond what he or she has been programmed to do and achieved something unexpected, perhaps something even unimagined before.... Enjoyment is characterized by this forward movement: by a sense of novelty, of accomplishment."
(p. 49)
"...the phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following."
1) The experience usually occurs when the users confront tasks they have a chance of completing
2) Users must be able to concentrate on what they are doing
3) The task underwritten has clear goals
4) The task provides immediate feedback
5) Users act with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life
6) Allow the users to exercise a sense of control over their actions
7) Concern for the self disappears, yet, the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over
8) The sense of the duration of time is altered
(p. 52)
"In all the activities people in our study reported engaging in, enjoyment comes at a very specific point, whenever the opportunities for action perceived by the individual are equal to his or her capabilities."
(p. 57)
"The kind of feedback [the users] work toward is in and of itself often unimportant... What makes this information valuable is the symbolic message it contains: that [the users] have succeeded in [their] goals."
(p. 61)
"...what people enjoy is not the sense of being in control, but the sense of exercising control in difficult situations."
(p. 67)
"The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself. Even if initially undertaken for other reasons, the activity that consumes [the users] becomes intrinsically rewarding."
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Flow - Inspiration #2: Open Source Automation
This may be the billionaire's market (p. 29).
"The optimists claim that through the course of evolution the nervous system has become dept at 'chunking' bits of information so that processing capacity is constantly expanded. Simple functions like adding a column of numbers or driving car grow to be automated, leaving the mind free to deal with more data... Consciousness, the optimists argue, is an "open system"; in effect, it is infinitely expandable, and there is no need to take its limitations into account."
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Flow - Inspiration #1: Integration
The following is an excerpt of the book I am reading, "'Flow' The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I plan on reading the book few times to draw some inspirations (typing will also help reiterate it) in regards to practical software development (p. 41).
COMPLEXITY AND THE GROWTH OF THE SELF:
Following a flow experience, the organization of the self is more complex than it had been before. It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow. Complexity is the result of two broad psychological processes: differentiation and integration. Differentiation implies a movement toward uniqueness, toward separating oneself from others. Integration refers to its opposite: a union with other people, with ideas and entities beyond the self. A complex self is one that succeeds in combining these opposite tendencies. The self becomes more differentiate as a result of flow because overcoming a challenge inevitably leaves a person feeling more capable, more skilled.... After each episode of flow a person becomes more of a unique individual, less predictable, possessed of rarer skills.
Complexity is often thought to have a negative meaning, synonymous with difficulty and confusion. That may be true, but only if we equate it with differentiation alone. Yet complexity also involves a second dimension - the integration of the autonomous parts. A complex engine, for instances, not only has many separate components, each performing a different function, but also demonstrates a high sensitivity because each of the components is in touch with all the others. Without integration, a differentiated system would be a confusing mess.
Flow helps to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration consciousness is usually well ordered. Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal. Experienced is in harmony. And when the flow episode is over, one feels more "together' then before, not only internally but also with respect to other people and to the world in general. In other words of the climber whom we quoted earlier: "[There's] no place that more draws the best from human beings.... [than] a mountaineering situation. Nobody hassles you to put your mind and body under tremendous stress to get to the top... Your comrades are there, but you all feel the same way at anyway, you're all in it together. Who can you trust more in the twentieth century then these people? People after the same self-discipline as yourself, following the deeper commitment... A bond like that with other people is in itself an ecstasy."
A self that is only differentiated - not integrated - may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. By the same token, a person whose self is based exclusively on integration will be connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to reflect complexity.
The self becomes complex as a result of experiencing flow. Paradoxically, it is when we act freely, for the sake of action itself rather then for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows.... Flow is important both because it makes the present instant more enjoyable, and because it builds the self-confidence that allows us to develop skills and make significant contributions to humankind.
COMPLEXITY AND THE GROWTH OF THE SELF:
Following a flow experience, the organization of the self is more complex than it had been before. It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow. Complexity is the result of two broad psychological processes: differentiation and integration. Differentiation implies a movement toward uniqueness, toward separating oneself from others. Integration refers to its opposite: a union with other people, with ideas and entities beyond the self. A complex self is one that succeeds in combining these opposite tendencies. The self becomes more differentiate as a result of flow because overcoming a challenge inevitably leaves a person feeling more capable, more skilled.... After each episode of flow a person becomes more of a unique individual, less predictable, possessed of rarer skills.
Complexity is often thought to have a negative meaning, synonymous with difficulty and confusion. That may be true, but only if we equate it with differentiation alone. Yet complexity also involves a second dimension - the integration of the autonomous parts. A complex engine, for instances, not only has many separate components, each performing a different function, but also demonstrates a high sensitivity because each of the components is in touch with all the others. Without integration, a differentiated system would be a confusing mess.
Flow helps to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration consciousness is usually well ordered. Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal. Experienced is in harmony. And when the flow episode is over, one feels more "together' then before, not only internally but also with respect to other people and to the world in general. In other words of the climber whom we quoted earlier: "[There's] no place that more draws the best from human beings.... [than] a mountaineering situation. Nobody hassles you to put your mind and body under tremendous stress to get to the top... Your comrades are there, but you all feel the same way at anyway, you're all in it together. Who can you trust more in the twentieth century then these people? People after the same self-discipline as yourself, following the deeper commitment... A bond like that with other people is in itself an ecstasy."
A self that is only differentiated - not integrated - may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. By the same token, a person whose self is based exclusively on integration will be connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to reflect complexity.
The self becomes complex as a result of experiencing flow. Paradoxically, it is when we act freely, for the sake of action itself rather then for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows.... Flow is important both because it makes the present instant more enjoyable, and because it builds the self-confidence that allows us to develop skills and make significant contributions to humankind.
Recollecting
When I last left SL, this was where I was: forum link
I was basically -300k in short-term debts (more close to 500k counting SL obligations) and $1800 in my pocket. Everyone urged me to get a job, but I knew that working for money will not take me anywhere, let alone fulfill my obligations.
Since then, I will be happily married for 3 years at the end of Aug '11 with a beautiful daughter expected then as well. The only sad thing was Timmy, my dog of 15yrs, has passed this world - but will always be remembered.
Professionally, I've managed to do what only 10% of all poker players do - make money. I've logged in 5.5 Million hands between Dec. 08 - April '11 before the poker Black Friday. With rakeback by becoming a Pokerstars Supernova Elite for two years and was about 15% ahead of pace this year year, I managed to generate about $250k through the mentioned period that helped knocked off some debt and help me get life back together:
I actually improved quite a bit towards the end averaging about $100/hr at NL200 on Bodog:
As for Juicetrading, I've managed to find a few local users with a few network that helped carried the project. As a group, I've made our users over 1Mil with me taking a small commission. I am currently at a Net Loss for the project overall, but have a very sophisticated tool that I built from scratch (plus a coder). Here's a screenshot of the tool, which is completely web-based UI. If set right, the software can be left unattended for months and will just arbitrage a user's sportsbetting accounts.
The IT portion of the business will be out of Vietnam (Development, Server Monitoring, etc.). I set that up in '10 while living there for 9 months. That should keep our IT cost low now until I move us to open source and let the public take over.
That takes us to now. Outside of SL, I have managed to rid myself of all of the short-term debts and now have what I feel will be are two safe solid streams of revenue. However, I am going to retire from poker since that was taking away the bulk of my life (6-10hrs a day) to study on Continuous Integration (thanks to an individual). My reason is that I feel I am nearing the top of a parabolic graph in terms of growth vs labor for poker whereas I am only at the starting point of an exponentially increasing graph regarding CI.
My goal/mission from here on out is simple: Make things right & great products free for everyone to use. I don't know how or where to start, but I know God will show me the way.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Nails, meet Hammer.
I am a man of faith. I am also a failure. I am a failure because in the current world we live in, we judge people's success by how much money they have. It was the Hammer that built everything. You can have a lot of nails, but without a Hammer, it's a lot more difficult to build what you need.
The paradigm has changed. We now have tools to build whatever we want. A man and a hammer can now make a difference. We should now judge people not by what man has given them, but what was given by God - a Conscious. With Conscious comes thought, and creativity. Creativity is fueled by passion, not by money. So now, we can measure man not by how much money he makes, but by his compassion, and how much money he helps with his fellow man. With that, I start at Zero... but I will begin with this tool:
Continuous Integration
The paradigm has changed. We now have tools to build whatever we want. A man and a hammer can now make a difference. We should now judge people not by what man has given them, but what was given by God - a Conscious. With Conscious comes thought, and creativity. Creativity is fueled by passion, not by money. So now, we can measure man not by how much money he makes, but by his compassion, and how much money he helps with his fellow man. With that, I start at Zero... but I will begin with this tool:
Continuous Integration
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