To be Free

HI ALL!

YES. FINALLY, a public post. Previously I did make a couple of friend locked posts but now that it's all set in stone, I can let it be known to the world! Lol.

I have a new job.

It's official. Contract signed, medical cleared... All that's left for me to do is to send in a 100 word intro of myself for the institute newsletter. And to resign for my current position, and apply for leave to clear up all my existing leave days... Lalalala! 

Just came back to SG after a 5d 4n trip to Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Was a nice though tiring trip. And hot. Very hot weather. Food was good, I picked up a few items, like a pair of cheap bluetooth earphones... An OTG thumbdrive (USB, lightning, micr usb).... a fake wooden digital clock that costs at least 4x as much in sg hence the reason why I never bought it... a tiny drone for playing in the room.... 


And now I'm broke.

No, not from the trip, which embarrassingly wasn't paid out of my pocket.





Nope... I just spent a ton on hobonichi 2019 diaries... As well as the midori a page a day dairy. 

I'm gonna end up with two new diaries than I did this year... And I'm not too sure if I'll have the time to use them all... But we'll see. I may end up using one for work or something... I don't know...

So on the hobonichi side... Nothing for the cousin (A5 diary). Just a new blank diary without cover. I was really hoping to buy a new cover because the plain black one that I have is too dull. I need some color in my life! But unfortunately, nothing caught my eye on the A5 and so I ended up getting just a bunch of cover and covers. Which works too I guess. Instead... I fell in love with this A6 cover, and so now I'll have an additional A6. And then last min I decided to add on a plain A6 cover to go with the blank notebooks... I *might* use those at work or something... So yeah... That's how I go broke...

Alright. That's all. Now I've got my room to pack. Super duper messy.

Also! Arashi exchange posting has started! Still waiting for my fic... Hope it's good. Looking forward to my new job. So excited. It'll be nice if I could stay on that job for a long time to come. 5 years, 10 years? That would be nice. And then perhaps I'll be able to do some artsy stuff as a side business... And move full time into that when this job runs out on me... Yeah... don't think i'll be able to stay in science for many more jobs... Not in Singapore anyway... Conversely Sg isn't too bad of a place to start something international? Idk... We'll see... One job at a time. Meanwhile... I really need to pack that table!

 

It's been a long time since I posted here? Maybe?

Happy birthday Oh-chan! Arashi's leader in nickname. Ha. He's supposedly my ichiban but really, most of the time I forget his presence in shows because he's hardly even there.... I mean, he hardly talks... I'm sure ya all understand what I mean.

But put him on the stage in the concert and he's a totally different man. And during his solos. Boy his solos. It's like a beast awakens...

So... Happy birthday Ohno! May you stay forever the same!





Onto other miscellaneous items...

It's almost Dec already. Gosh. Time flies. And my new year resolutions? Hmm... Let's see....

Not doing well on some fronts for sure.
I pledged to read 15 books this year... And unless I cheat by reading loads of short fiction books, I'll fail my pledge since I've only read 7 books so far :(

NM has been neglected for months. All I've done is update the gutto sports and shiyagare episode guides as I watch them. Which means that I'm still about half a year behind. Sigh.

And yes, I'm still over half a year behind in my arashi shows watching. I think I'll never catch up. Sigh.

Writing a little something everyday...? Well... Kinda. I'm keeping a physical diary and writing a little page everyday.... BUT sometimes I'm just too tired or whatever and I backdate entries. So strictly speaking it's not writing EVERYDAY per say, but it's ok, I allow myself to cheat. I'd rather go back and fill out those pages then leave the pages blank and stop writing entirely. Though it's definitely easier to write everyday than to backdate. Yeah. You lose the momentum of writing and it gets harder. *shrugs* Either way I'm giving myself a pass on this one. Well, for the past two months or so anyway.

SF... I'm starting to try and post something once a week again. Hopefully that place will become more lively once again, but dang, we really need more people posting besides myself and junaibanina... :( *sigh*

Learning programming... Well... *Just* restarted my engine on that one. Did a basic html5 course last weekend and learnt a few new things. Now I'm struggling with this not so well written basic bioinformatics course that forces you to take a basic python course and the freaking first week quiz is due soon and I'm still no where near completing the first week bioinformatics course material because I have to spend so much time on the basics python course. Arghs. Oh wells. But python is good. It's useful for bioinformatics and of course it's useful for 'pure' programming jobs. Either or. If I stay in science, I'll still go computers. If I don't, then it's still computers. There's no future in science as a pure wet lab scientist. Yeah. 

Alright... That's all from me for now. I still have a fic to write and loads of course material to go through. Yeah fic. The Ohno exchange that the mods have gone MIA sigh. Oh wells. But I still need to finish the fic. My recipient hasn't gone MIA after all. I'm just really sorry that it'll be late. All I have right now are some ideas, and not a single word written sigh. Sorry :( I just hope the fic will end up worth the wait....

Till next time folks!

And so it's done. Turned in all my cards and passes... All my lab notebooks and data... Logged out from everything and deleted my user account in my work pc... All over. I'm 'unemployed' for the weekend.

All that's left is my uni staff card with my hole punched through the middle of the magnetic strip - I opted to keep the card as a souvenir since they gave the option.

Now some compartments of my leather wallet - another product from kickstarter - are lose because of the fewer cards. Kinda worried if my ezlink and condo card will fall out... If I hold the wallet with the compartment opening facing down and shake, the cards do come out... The soft leather is kinda rubbed thin at some parts because it's always in my pocket, and well, I sweat.... Maybe I'll change to another kickstarter wallet soon...

Was a rather lonely last day at work. Though I did spend some time talking to two of my colleagues. And got a farewell card from them and a gift card whee! Thank you! 

Though I'd kinda wished it was a gift card to kino but no I really shouldn't be looking at a gift horse in the mouth. And it was really thoughtful of them, a gift card to spotlight... Because I guess they know about my various crafting hobbies. But unfortunately spotlight sells more of those... crafting supplies...? If only it was for say... art friend, I'd have a ton of things to buy... :P Cos I don't really sew... But I've not been to spotlight in a long time cos it's out of the way... I'm sure I'll find a ton of stuff to get if I go there... Cos well... I just love these sort of crafting stuff regardless.

So thank you!

Ah... Still haven't watched the I'll be there PV or making.

And no, I've not done any comm invites or SF membership, and I won't be doing them tonight. Please be a little more patient ok? I'm really tired now and there's some things I need to do - e.g. layout before I start sending out the invites.

Honestly I'm surprised at the number of PMs I've received. I mean, it was a tiny comm to began with. And then I've been on hiatus since forever.... But already I have like... 10% of the members PM me. It's been days since SF@DW opened and we don't even have 10% of of the members there yet. In one day I got like maybe 1/3 or more of the current SF@DW membership numbers in term of PMs.... I'm surprised...

But yeah, I did say in the post that you'll have to wait a while before the invites get processed. Consider yourself warned. 



Went out for dinner with my jc friends earlier.

As usual, there was a lot of hospital talk cos that's what happens when you put two doctors and one pharmacist together. And hurrah, come next monday, I'll also be sort of stepping into that world with my job in the hospital research lab.

And I must say that I've always really enjoyed listening to their stories. Fascinating. I've always been interesting in that area of science after all. No that I want or ever wanted to be a medical doctor. It's just not a job for me. Med school would have killed me with all the memorisation work, and I don't enjoy talking to people anyway. I doubt seeing and treating patients will give me any joy. Heck, even just attempting to do sales made me so mentally exhausted. Nope, not for me.

But learning about that stuff? Always have loved it. Really enjoyed the talk. And I'm happy to be finally stepping back into the world. To me medical related research, whether more on the clinical side or more towards basic research, has always been where I should be. Where the game is. And now I'm finally stepping back into the game. Finally.

Finally.

I'm back. 

Crazy days ahead?

Well definitely crazy days ahead in SG. We're stepping into the hot season again. The weather is getting crazy hot. It's almost 2am and still 29.2 °C . Worst still, insects are everywhere. I'm getting new insect bites every single day. And that's despite all the mosquito repellent I spray... Started burning some incense today but I'm still seeing insects flying around the room. WTF? Already got another fresh bite on my wrist. Worst still are the ones on your feet. Like the one on the bottom of my left foot that I 'acquired' two days ago. Geez. Thankfully none on my toes so far... Those are super duper itchy....!!!

Possibly crazy days on LJ too? Not sure if a mass deletion is coming but I've seen quite a few accounts suspended just looking through the list of members in arashi-on. Not a good sign...? I have an ominous feeling that something bad is coming...

Now all that I'm hoping to see on DW is for the new post editor to get finished and come out of beta. Or for these two points of improvements to the current post editor. 1) the ability to select tags from a list 2) show the rich text editor menu bar in the HTML editor. That way I can do my post in HTML and still use the button for adding in a link instead of switching over to the rich text editor or typing out the entire thing in html myself cos well, I'm lazy ok? And it's much faster to just press a button rather than type out all that a href stuff. A better interface when inserting photos and the ability to link to accounts like instagram would be much appreciated too, though not as important as the ability to select tags from a list, rather than typing from memory or posting first then editing and adding in the tags later.

--------------------

Last day of my leave left. Next week I'm starting on my new job....

Spent the last two days doing nothing but watching Arashi shows. Today in particular was watching TSD all the way up till... End of Aug. Yeah... Still at the start of June for the rest of the shows... But progress!!!

Not done a single thing with my 3D pen though, and it feels like I won't tmr either... Oh wells... Bulk of my time last week was spent on DW... Moving communities over... Updating 1 masterpost... Ok, I did update my masterpost for The Chronicles as well as all the links back to the masterpost on each chapter. And then I got sick/bored of it and cried "enough!". And started watching Arashi shows instead.

Have I already mentioned that I watched 99.9? It was so fucking good. Great cast, solid storyline... Jun was cute... Oh I think I did talk about it previously already...

So... Still 2 months more to go till my target Aug... And there's still so many other things to do...

Suddenly I'm feeling the urgent need to get my comms up and running on DW again...

Oh yeah... I did pick a new layout for my DW personal blog, but I've not customised it yet....

New job next week... Excited... Hope it's good.

Wanted to write more... But now I'm too tired to make sense anymore... So that's all. Nights.

storm_freaks  is now open for sign ups!

So that's two comms that are officially open on DW. 

Two more to go... *takes a deep breath*

Next up I'll be looking at the layout and then masterpost on nutty_arashi. And then being busy with the membership stuff for SF.



In other news. Spent last night and this morning binge watching 99.9 and $%!)&%)!&$)! I LOVE IT SO MUCH. It's not that I wasn't willing to watch it last time ok? It's just purely lack of time. I couldn't resist it anymore after watching all the osama no brunch episodes... Esp when they introduce the part about Miyama being arrested. I was like FUCK I NEED TO WATCH IT NOW. And so I did.

It was... Perfect.

Detective work.

Solid script/story.

Great cast.

With the right amount of humor...

Every one of the cast members brought their character to life... And literally gave it character. Whether it's the proud and quirky Miyama, or the equally proud rival Sada... Or the hilarious Akashi...

Love it. Finally there's a Jun drama that I absolutely love.

Even better than kagi heya? Possibly so. You have to give it up to Jun, that guy is a classy actor. And hurrah for him playing in a non-romantic drama for once? (Ok there was Lukcy 7, but it was only so so IMO.)

The kind of crazy/eccentric character that's Miyama... Arghs I just love it. And so adorable too. Despite his attitude and everything he's such an adorable, loveable character. Arghs. Love it.


So...

Half of my staycation is over. And all I've really done is... Watch some arashi shows (ok, at least I finished a drama series. That's a big accomplishment IMO.) And move two communities over to DW. Have not played with my 3D pen yet... And then there's still my personal DW to set up --> the layouts and making a new sticky post...

*sigh*

Alright... That's all for Today's post I guess.... 

Hello from DW.

Yes. I've migrated all my entries... And honestly... Looking at the laws and having read stories about the underhanded things that that 1government has done to people, citizens and foreigners alike... I feel like just moving away from LJ. For now I'm still crossposting... But in the future, who knows? I'd love it if we could create a mass migration to DW. Starting with the communities I guess... Doesn't mean we have to close down everything on LJ, things can co-exist for some time...

But yeah... Honestly, I've always had my doubts about LJ. A few years back it was constantly breaking down, under maintenance... So many things were breaking all time... I decided then to keep all my entries in my own diary elsewhere as a backup.

Yeah... There's a lot about DW that could be improved upon for sure... And I've hardly used DW enough to know the upsides and the downsides... But considering how widespread the laws mentioned in the LJ TOS can be... Well sure, it can be nothing. But if they take offense? If they decide that gay sex for eg is offensive and decide to remove my account because of my fics... Then in which case I can only be glad that I already have another blog at DW, with all my posts, tags, and even comments migrated over.

All that I'm really losing is... some stats maybe? Like my comments posted. Cos sure, I posted a ton of comments, but since they were posted as coolohoh@lj, DW doesn't recognise it as something *I* posted. 

Not that I'll delete my LJ account... What's there will remain there. I'm a nostalgic person like that (think that's bad grammar but whatever).

I guess... The main whining people have it 'but I have to join all the communities again'. Well, think about the even bigger problem stopping communities from moving to DW - We have to accept everyone again. Even if we just check if you're already in the comm on LJ etc... That's still a lot of work when a community has hundreds, thousands of members. What's writing a comment VS reading a few hundred comments and accepting people in?

 And you don't have to worry about having an empty DW journal. You can import all your posts from LJ over. Automatically. Even communities (but the problem with communities is more on re-accepting everyone). All you have to do is go to Organise > import content, and key in your LJ username and password. Select everything on the next page, and confirm the import. Then you're done. You can log out of DW, turn off your computer, do whatever. Sure the import can take a loooong time. But you don't even need to be connected to the internet for the import to happen. You don't need a fast internet connection or whatever... DW servers will go to LJ and import it for you, automatically. You don't have to do a thing.

For communities all you need to do is to make a new community on DW, then when you go to the import page, select work as <your community name> and then you'll be given the option to key in your LJ username and password, as well as the LJ community name. And then done. You can start the import on your own LJ, and multiple communities at once. Heck, I'm waiting for the entries and comments to finish importing on... Let's see... 3, 4, 5? Yeah 5 communities as I type. 

At the very least... Think of DW as a backup and get things imported first. Then you can slowly think about migrating your layout over or making a new layout on DW and stuff. I heard comments that the DW styles are ugly... There's a post somewhere about how you can get LJ flexible squares layout onto DW. TBH, the generic LJ layouts are all very ugly too... You have to tinker with the custom CSS and stuff to get a decent looking layout... So yeah... :X

Somehow... I'm really welcoming the move though. Heck, I even want everyone to move. Get some prominent LJ communities to move or at least say make a DW alternative and the masses will follow suit... But we need to have a framework, a network of Arashi communities on DW first before people will move... I think many comms are now adopting a wait and see attitude... And tbh SF/me was among them... But SF does have quite a large membership... If we can orchestrate a move, and encourage members to move - have easy guides stating how to do an import... I think more communities will follow suit.

But for now... I need to use and understand DW myself. What's the arashi fandom scene like here? How many arashi comms are here? Do we have any arashirabu or arashi_on equivalents? If not, make one? I'm switching to a new job and in the mood for doing all these random 'crap' again. I'm definitely interested in creating the next big arashi comm on DW... :P

Alright, that's all for now. Last proper working day at this job for me tmr. And today I've spent my entire day teaching a PhD student. And we aren't done yet sigh... Gotta head to the lab soon... 


Oh yeah... One bad thing about DW. No tag selection menu like in LJ. I'm definitely going to drop by the suggestion board or somewhere and suggest that. That's definitely needed. Yeah. DW isn't as polished as LJ yet, but I think they are actively making changes... So we can all put in our bit to help DW become better. 

Mass deleting comments on my LJ inbox...

It went over 100 again...

As usual, I can't keep up with my LJ inbox/discussion posts comments...

Thanks to everyone for taking part in the discussions!

Btw, Nihongo Manabu promotion... I broke down the I'll be there lyrics line by line, phrase by phrase (actually did this last week), so do check it out!


In other news. It's MAY! I'm watching Arashi shows from MAY last year. Finished all the April stuff and am stepping into May! I'm just 11 months behind now lol.

Hmm, that's all for now I guess...

Initially typed this out on SF but it turned out too long and since it's totally off topic... It goes here instead.

Today? Was a terrible day. It started off well... Then things started going downhill when I got this colleague to teach me how to use a machine called the MP-AES to measure Fe concentration. I still have not read up on how this machine works... But basic principle is like this: different elements emit different light when burned. So this machine generates a plasma and then it has a detector to detect specific wavelengths of light so that you can know exactly how much of a particular element you have in your sample. (Correct me if you know better people!) So yes. I was learning from this colleague whom I've had a really bad experience with trying to teach her stuff last time (she used to be a final year project student here, so she's really new). And she's not experienced with using this machine. So she basically takes really long to get things started. And when the machine finally starts, the plasma wouldn't start. We restart. Plasma starts at last... But when we try to get the machine to do some auto conditioning, it wouldn't work! Trying this, trying that... I suggest to try another sample... Didn't work. I ask her if she knows anyone who's more experienced at using the equipment, she doesn't know anyone. We tried to ask the lab in charge, she took a screenshot of the error and mailed it to the engineer instead of helping us troubleshoot. Finally I suggested we restart again. And it worked. -.-'''

Sigh. Then I loaded my 109 samples to the auto sampler. Keyed in the sample names... When it's all finally done and we hit the run button, over 2 hours has passed since the start. Geez. All that trying to get things to work. I thought it would have only taken 30 mins at most but nope, took over 2 hours. And the software not allowing for adding samples on the fly while the machine starts running didn't help. Because otherwise I could have it start running already while I slowly continued keying in all my sample names. 109 of them!

I timed. It takes ~90 secs per sample. So it'll take almost 3 hours for all my samples. Went back to the office. Checked at the 1.5 hour mark, everything was fine.

Came back down around the time it *should* have been done and... It had stopped mid way. With over 30 samples to go. Cos the gas ran out. Zzzz. It was already past 7pm.

I tried looking for the spanner to take off the N2 gas tank regulator. Can't find the big spanner. Zzz. I was about to walk away (go home, and continue tomorrow) when some relatively new PhD student comes along. Just out of curiousity I just ask her about the gas regulator and she's like, oh yeah, I know that. Turns out she's used that machine quite a lot, and she would have been the expert we were looking for in the afternoon. *sigh*

And it turns out despite all my circling around the gas tank storage room, and looking behind nooks and crannys, I *still* managed to missed the spanner. I was simply looking at the wrong place zzz. *sigh*. So, spanner found. But the thing was too tight. Time to look around the lab for a strong guy to help. Thankfully, another PhD student was still around. The guy I'd just taught something to this morning. Gas tank changed. Hurrah. Plasma ignites. The program continues running. I head back up to finish that irritating programming challenge that I was stuck at. (I still swear there's some bug in their software for that question.) Went back down 30 minutes later, turns out that the plasma got cut off immediately after I left the lab. There were still over 30 samples to run zzzz. It was way past 8pm. I give up. I restart the plasma and sit in the lab till the end. Cleaning and clearing up whatever I could. Good thing I stayed too, because the plasma cut off AGAIN about 10 samples in. By the time I finish everything it was past 9pm. And I still had not had any dinner.

At least it's all done now. I didn't want to wait till tmr (well today, it's past midnight) because I have no idea how long it'll take to set things up again. And capping back the samples, and uncapping them, keying in the sample names... All that takes a lot of time... So yeah. At least it's done now... I don't have to deal with it in a while... *sigh*

And that, ladies and gentleman, was my bad day.

So this just happened on LINE chat. (Rephrased)

Friend: You are the mods of so many LJ comms
Me: Yeah...
Friend: And you're also working
Me: Oh I'm learning web dev now, so next time I can make my own LJ themes
(Well, at least I'll be able to know exactly what I'm doing when I modify themes)
Friend: And when will you sleep and meet up with friends?
Friend: Vampire?
Me: I don't meet up with friends that much
(I don't have that many RL friends in the first place. And everyone is busy. Like... 2 doctors? A journalist whom we gave up contacting years ago? Ok, one friend just came back from UK after her PhD, but she's busy running around setting everything one might possibly need to do after migrating from another country. [technically she's coming back, but practically it's the same...] Plus, I'm anti-social, and these days, my anti-socialness has reached quite a high level...)
Friend: You are like q (I think q's pet phrase is 'sleep is for the weak'... Or was that someone else hmm...)
Me: I sleep 4-5 hours a day
Friend: You know that you are crazy?


LOLOLOL.

Yup. I very well know that.

And I'm going fucking mental with this boring excuse of a job. Like this whole week I basically accomplished nothing formal work wise. Like nothing. The FIA didn't work properly. Engineer came down yesterday, and today it still wasn't working, the values for ammonia was weird. Then at midnight I got an email from DJI phantom (yes, that shall be the nickname for the new rf - who isn't that new anymore and therefore needs a new nickname) that even the NO2 and NO3 results were wrong. FUCK. And I already tossed the extra diluted samples. FML. Like seriously. Do you really, really need the NO3 results? If it was just NO2 and ammonia I can do without the FIA and we'd have gotten the results like LONG ago. *sigh*

DJI seems to think that FIA is really good but it kinda sucks. It's a crapton of work and I seriously don't think it's any faster than doing things the manual way. Only because of the stupid ammonia solution used in measuring NO3... That made my eyes really dry and basically made me (temporarily) blind. And makes your throat hurt too. If not for that... I wouldn't use the FIA at all...

*shrugs*

Oh wells.

At least I'm listening to a crapton of podcasts at work so I'm not completely wasting my time.

Like I have 49 active podcasts that I subscribe to now. Of varying frequency and length.... Including a lot of weekly and even daily podcasts. And I can listen to all those and even catch up on some back episodes of This week in Microbiology and This week in Parasitism. The episodes starts to build up when I don't do lab or don't listen for a while... But on lab days... Well. I listen to my podcasts at max speed... Overcast has a wonderful variable speed function though, so in reality it's around 2.2 - 2.5x speed. So an hour podcasts finishes in less than 30 mins and so on. In just an afternoon of lab, for say like 4 hours? I can go through over 9 hours worth of podcasts. That's a lot of podcasts that I listen to. And I often listen when commuting too. That's another 2-3 hours of listening a day. Yup... Definitely need a lot of podcasts to keep my mind occupied. These days I can't listen to podcasts at regular speed anymore. Like... Why do they talk so slowly geez! It absolutely puts me to sleep. I don't understand 100% of the hardcore science podcasts, but hearing some terms get repeated over and over, I still learn something. Maybe 30-70% of each podcast, depending on how much attention I'm paying to it, and of course, the subject matter. The rest? The tech stuff and stories? Not a problem man. I understand them fully.

I realise that I'm a person who's easily bored. And well, it's not really a new realization, nor a recent occurrence. I threw myself into gaming starting from secondary school while still doing reasonably well at school, even though our school curriculum and homework was seriously demanding. Like, we'd be doing presentations every other lesson, and then have a few projects and tests all in the same week. And projects like 'build a model of dna packing', and 'build a toy based on the principles or either the motor or the generator'. And you do those stuff from scratch, and do up a report, and maybe a presentation. Like wtf kind of toy are we supposed to build geez? A toy! Using self-made motors or generators! It was hard... But fun times. Of course, I was the chairman of my weiqi club too. And an avid gamer. Utopia, runescape... Neopets probably stuck around for a bit longer before I stopped that. Not before I dabbled in some html on my pet pages though. I think I only started maplestory pretty late. I was a hardcore gamer too. Well, still am? Kinda. It's vainglory for me these days.

And when I say I was playing maple... I was doing plenty of research about all the classes, builds, items... Writing my own guides, being the 'leader' in forums. Even helping hidden-street.com to update the database. I was doing all that crap. All while preparing for my A levels. Heck. I played maple throughout uni. Like in my FYP aka final year project aka undergrad thesis days, it was like 'maple? or do fyp?'. Cos I did a bioinformatics project, and I was already using a mac at that time and doing either required a complete reboot of the system into either mac or windows. And I played for days at a time. (Still got an A for that.)

Yup. So I've always been keeping myself occupied one way or another. After maple, it was Arashi and LJ that stole my attention. Watching Arashi shows and picking up Japanese. Writing fanfics. Doing super detailed bangumi reviews. Later on doing subs, and then managing a ton of lj comms.

Always something to keep me occupied.

And now it's learning web-dev I guess. All because I wanted to start another new website. Well, the website and me wanting to learn programming has been a thing for years already... So it's high time. And since I was at a loss on which programming language to start with, and since I chanced upon this amazing website called 'Freecodecamp', I ended up deciding to do web dev instead. The main tipping point was my own website I guess. I initially wanted to use WP like I did with Nihongo Manabu. But there are some specific ways I'd like my website to look, that I've yet to find in a WP theme. So why not build my own? I initially wanted to get *something*, some form of a website up and running by end of Dec, but with a holiday in China taking up the bulk of my two weeks leave, I don't think I'll be able to make it. Let's see if I can get something up by Jan instead. Oh wells.

Making the content of the site would be as hard a task as designing the site I guess... Esp the parts that involve drawing web comics. Even if it's stick figures. Because boy do I suck at drawing.

We'll see how this new venture goes. If it goes well, I might say goodbye to being a slave to stupid and ungrateful rfs in the lab forever. Be my own boss. Than I don't have to deal with the crappy office and lab politics. (In exchange, I'll probably have to deal with tons of hate comments/mail on the web?)

Like I'm just so sick of this shit. All the stupid rules and policies. And the lack of passion. And I don't think that it's easy to change even with a new workplace... As long as I'm in this country. Why? Because the whole culture here, the government policies, create such an environment.

So, so sick.

I want out.

And perhaps more so than a PhD, programming is my way out. I keep saying I don't know what area to specialise in if I were to do a PhD. I still don't. I like learning about everything and anything. And I have liked computers, been more proficient at it than my peers, since a long time ago. It's about a week into the code camp though so it's still too early to tell how I'd really like it. But so far, it's been fun. It's quite like working in the lab in many ways. You meet obstacles. You can't get something to work. You check back on your code, or recall your steps, and think about what might have gone wrong. You check the error messages. You check the unexpected results. You deduce what went wrong (google and ask around if you must), and then try again. And again. And each time I hit the run button on my code it's like doing a new round of experiments. Only that in programming you typically get your results way, way faster than in science. It's all just an experiment and I like experiments. If you don't know how things work, you try it. Just like if you don't know what a button does in that new equipment software, you hover over it and see what help text appears. And then you click on it. Because what's the worst thing that can happen? You break something in the software and maybe you have to restart the program. That's pretty much it. Why can't people learn to use the software themselves? Why can't they do anything? Arghs. Once again it leads back to how I'm smarter than everyone around me. Not because I'm a genius, but because they are just. Arghs. Low in standard.

All that politics and lousy people management. So many people have come and go. Really dumb management really. Like. I can do so much more sophisticated things than what you're making me do now. You're not even using me at like 50% of my full potential. Pfft. Pathetic. Maybe not even 30%. Oh wells. But I'm not appreciated for my efforts anyway, so I'm not even willing to give you my 100%. Unlike when I was working with unsup. I was like putting in 200% effort. Lol. Now? You're just not worth it. I'm happy to spend my brain power learning something new instead.

So far so good. I'm not completely new to all programming, since I've dabbled in html since a long time ago. Primary school in fact. Making neopets pet pages. And then with my numerous blogs. And even just typing my LJ entries in html mode. Or modifying themes so that they look the way I want. Making IRC chatbots (ok, just modifying them). Playing with IFTTT. Then my short-lived attempted at learning R (well, I did go through about 6 chapters in the book...?) and then putting a basic python code together. And I've always had a touch and go relationship with programming and stuff, so it's not completely new. And I can learn fast when I already have a little inking on the subject matter. And I've had a lot, a lot of informal experiences with coding.

Alrights. That's all for now. Back to writing down notes for all the past challenges I completed over the 5 days of freecodecamping. Yup, I even managed to build two simple webpages at work on wedn too, when the engineer was trying to fix/troubleshoot with the FIA, and DJI didn't give me like ANYTHING to do. I can't be bothered to ask her for jobs anymore too, after all the times she neglected me. She came to find me too, and only asked me to do something like late in the afternoon. Like, didn't it ever occur to you that you should have asked me to do that in the morning? Then you wouldn't have had to do it today. Geez. Oh wells. It was all good. I had fun trying to make my webpages and I revised quite a bit of coding, and learnt a few new tricks too.

Let's see where this crazy kid ends up.