Blog De Ganz

Even Monsters Have Stories To Tell

// July 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Blogging

When I was a young I would come up with stories, and then put characters into them. And each of the characters would often feel like “a mere device”.

I think the breakthrough to having believable characters is to believe in them. Because sometimes you would be using characters you hadn’t created, but simply cared about. And I have learned that if you cared enough about your characters, what happenes to them will be interesting.

I’m not sure that’s much of an aphorism, but it’s important to care about them, about who they are and what they do. And (for me) for them to be people I would want to spend time with — I don’t really care whose side they are on, and they can be monstrous on the outside or, worse, on the inside, but you still have to want to spend time with them. If you met one of these characters socially would you talk to them, or make an excuse and flee?

One of the most important thing I learned is that if you are actually interested, and not faking it, people will tell you anything, and you will take pleasure in their company. So my suggestion for anyone is, talk to people, especially people you would normally avoid talking to. Find out their stories.

June Heat

// July 1st, 2009 // No Comments » // Blogging

This morning I put my thinking cap back on. I’m taking that as a sign of good things to come. It’s supposed to be very hot today.In protest I shall shake my fists at the sun, glimpsed between strips of shade. It seems the best way to face this whole june heat thingy.

Concerning The Author’s Memoir

// June 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // Blogging

The reason my blogging as been inconsistent as of late is because I am working on my memoir or some day i hope it would turn out to be just that.

Actually i am taking the time to write down all the significant events that has happened to me and how i really felt about them.

I just felt i needed to write this down before they are lost to the recess of my mind.

Unfortunately no one is going to get a hold of it just yet.

It’s far from finished and strangely enough there is a mirage of experience and emotions involved.

I have decided not to hold back anything and thus lots of juicy truths will be revealed but more importantly i want it to be a genuine account of my life.

Recreation

// June 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Blogging

There are new works in progress on computers on my table.
There are tutorials scheduled and lists upon lists.
There are commissions in progress.
There are long overdue projects in queue.
There is the one project I long to work on and rarely get to touch.
There are people waiting for my calls.
I feel nowhere near a stopping point.
I don’t think things will even begin to ease up until perhaps later.
So, I’m taking a little time off, getting a change of scenery.
Because I can’t afford not to.
I’m tired from overworking, still sore and recovering from the 2 hour brisk walk sessions, but mostly, my brain needs some fresh air.
We all work better and smarter with rest.
They don’t call it ‘recreation’ for nothing.

Concerning Many Things

// June 2nd, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Blogging

Today was mostly an administrative sort of day, measure or count something. Yesterday was like that. And the day before.

I don’t remember what happened the day before that, just that everything seemed more difficult than it should be.

And today, I began to get on my nerves as I worked. So I took a break. By the time I returned I’d worked out a couple of things on ‘the list.’

I took a walk around the neighborhood. The heat was still cloying, so it eventually evolved into a trudge around the neighborhood. But the conversation with my inner voice was lively. The activity proved useful.

Not working for days tends to have a negative effect on my mental state. Not working in the for weeks makes me nuts — not at all in the good way.

It occurs to me that it’s a stupid thing to put such a burden on my work. There are other ways to achieve a similar end result (balance, peace of mind, the zone, zen, any alphabet of terms). running, for example. Any activity that allows us to concentrate on that all-important “one thing” can serve as meditation. There is indeed such a thing as too much thinking, after all.

It also occurs to me that I’ve stopped doing these other sorts of activities that used to ‘tide me over’ until I could get back to serious work. I can look back (now) and see how it happened, gradually. I stopped seeing jogging or relaxation as productive and valuable activities. It’s classic anxiety-driven over-working behavior. It seemed that if I had time to do other things, I should be at work, even though a vigorous run can be accomplished in twenty minutes.

This is not good thinking. Or logical.

But loads of us tend to be illogical when it comes to caring for ourselves.

It doesn’t matter so much why we do it, as recognizing that we do and fixing it.

I’ve spent a great deal of energy and time trying to fix a lot of things. I’ve spent little time enjoying.

Most of those things we fret over will very likely seem to fix themselves if we fix ourselves. There’s a reason we’re supposed to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first. Silly humans!

And oh,
- I highly recommend Pixar’s new movie, UP
- And I just bought my second Samsung SyncMaster 2494hs HD monitor.
- I might be going to Canada in March/April 2010 for my Course
- Took a pay cut from ALU
- I have got 30 books to read
- I don’t think I will get married anytime soon. I just haven’t invested the time to look for someone. All my old puppy loves are either estranged in new love relationships or married or getting married. I guess having Leonardo Da Vinci as an inspiration does little for your love life. Esp. now many historian claim he was homosexual.
- I have stop contemplating on the meaning of life. Because it’s like squaring the circle. It would require that pi, used in calculating the area of a circle, be a precise or a “rational” number. Unfortunately pi is irrational.

G.K. Chesterton on why we believe in fairy tales

// June 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Thoughts

“Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” The stage version has a moral too. In this quintessentially theatrical world, there’s a tacit argument for resourcefulness, imagination and valor.

Teamwork - Does It Really Work?

// June 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Thoughts

Consider a brief list of reasons that teamwork will make any normal individual perform below his highest potential:

1. Your best time for thinking might be the other guy’s best time to take a nap. If that’s the only time you can have a meeting, one of you isn’t going to be operating at peak performance.

2. Credit for success is distributed across the team. So is blame. If you believe people are motivated by a desire for credit, or a desire to avoid blame, teamwork is a blunting force.

3. In any group of three people, there’s generally at least one disruptive moron.

4. People have different work styles. Some people like to do everything just right. Others like the quick and dirty approach, fixing things as they go. In a team, you spend half of your time arguing over the best philosophy for every action.

5. To mediocre minds, a brilliant idea and a dumb idea sound identical. A team will vote out the best ideas along with the worst.

6. The dominant team members will get their way over the objections of the meek, no matter how competent the meek might be.

7. In a team, you must continually explain yourself, defending every thought and every action.

8. Everyone has a different risk profile. Your appetite for risk won’t be shared by the group.

9. Everyone wants to do the fun stuff and not the boring-but-necessary parts.

10. You eat when the team agrees that it’s time for lunch. That means you’re often hungry while trying to work, or wasting time eating when you’re not hungry.

11. All meetings last longer than they should.

One of the implications of more people working for themselves, and working from home, is that people will be somewhat freed from the tyranny of teamwork. I wonder if that bodes well for the future of humanity. At least it works for me. I just hate office gossip.

Open-mindedness

// May 23rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Videos

Evernote

// April 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Blogging

It is not customary for me to recommend services from the net to my readers. Usually I will state my case and bestow the opportunity of adoption on the kindred soul.

But today, I am recommending a service that I whole heartily would want you to get. It’s called Evernote and it has certainly made a huge difference in the way a compulsive note taker like me works.

It’s basically a service that allows you to sync all your notes from a PC, MAC, iPhone, iPod touch and even mobile phones together. The best part is it’s free. But the premium service which cost about 5USD a month or 45USD a year offers some nifty upgrades. The best of which is the Text recognition inside images.

All you have to do is snap a pic of a note you wrote or a business card and upload the data to Evernote and the next time you are looking for it, just search for the words within the image and poof the results appear.

Well since it’s free, there really isn’t a reason why you shouldn’t try it.

Website: http://www.evernote.com

Set Sails Matey!

// April 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Blogging

This week we are going to have the final verdict on the Pirate Bay, one of the biggest websites that allows sharing contents in internet.

I came across this while I was browsing the net on pirates, and this is what I found out:

“Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O’ Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century.” They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.”