Caught up with Work

The past few weeks have been hectic, or maybe even then it would be a crude understatement. As of late, I haven't had the opportunity to sit down and come up with a decent blog entry. So now that a weekend has come, I thought I'd take some time to come up with something, at least to get things back in order.

So much of the reason why things have been hectic lately has much to do with work. It's only been two months into the new year, and I find myself swamped with quite a number of responsibilities. Nothing new, but a bit of a comforting feeling to know that they find me a valuable asset to the company.

At present, I'm juggling quite a bit on my plate, having to take on multiple roles, sometimes all at once that I'm not sure if I'll burn myself out. I still do QA for a small project or two, have director tasks, internally produce/manage an ongoing project (go play it! just search Manila Rush on the Play Store and App Store)  and manage a beta community forum to boot (hence me reviving a bit of forum moderation experience I racked up back in 2004-2008). It'll be a miracle to find time to squeeze all the things I need to do for each role in 8 hours a day for a week. Not to mention all the other things I have to attend to aside from all that.

When I started out in the company, I always wonders what people in the managerial level do. Now that I'm so immersed in it, I sometimes wished it was a bit easier. To balance everything out, I just tell myself: "Hey, you're the youngest director around here. They wouldn't give you these tasks if they didn't think you could handle it. Your performance has been great, so keep at it! Yudan sezu ni ikou (Let's go and not get careless)!" A mouthful and not exactly verbatim every single time, but it helps keep me motivated. :)

These succeeding weeks will be a challenge, but a welcome one (I think). It'll be an uphill battle, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that things will be for the better.

The 2014 Project

Everyone's got their goals for the year. Whether it be to save more money, lose (or gain) some weight, read more books, watch more movies/series or write more stories, everyone has their own little goals to set for themselves, and by the end of the year, they consider whether or not they've accomplished heaps or fell short of disappointing themselves for not pushing themselves harder.

As for me? Well, goals are good to have, but I want to look at things as a whole, so I'll just wrap it up neatly and consider it all part of one big project for the year. Not so much physical (but that's not to say everything will just be up in the air!), but I hope you get what I'm saying.

The end product of this project can be summarized like so: CARPE DIEM.

That's what I want for myself, and everything can just fall into place as all these little goals. Mine are jotted down below:

1. Save more. Granted, I'm in a position where I love my job and get paid for doing it, which doesn't happen to most people. But if I splurge too haphazardly I won't be able to set aside anything for myself. So to remedy that situation, I decided to come up with a little saving scheme for myself (which eventually blossomed into adapting the 52-Week Money Challenge) on top of the 50-30-20 rule of thumb that I plan to invoke this 2014. 
• Last year, I made it a habit to always deposit a set amount when every payday comes along. But I always end up needing to withdraw a small portion of what I deposit shortly afterwards, and that's something I hope not to make a repeat with this time around. 
• As for personal goals, I want to have a goal to focus on with all these saving up. What do I want for myself anyway?
• A space to live in with Kai (one that gives an easier access to work prominently). A studio or a 1-bedroom will suffice. (We joke how Kai is eager to Feng shui it once we do find a nice spot.) It's a nice statement to mean that we're not joking around and are actually taking all this seriously. We wanna be together, and that includes living under one roof eventually. So be nice 2014!
• An iPhone 5 (I've caught the iPhone bug. But I've decided I want to get my own instead of relying on our carrier services.)
2. Plan, plan, plan. Not that I'm against spontaneity, but as far as keeping to budgets are concerned, I want to be able to properly assign an amount to spend on and nothing more (but less is better!). That's why it's always great to invest in knowing when things happen,so you can allot an amount of your spending budget when necessary. Say an upcoming movie watching day, so time it accordingly. 
3. Commence Active Blogging. Much of the reason I made a blog was because I needed an outlet to chronicle the little things in my everyday life. Every day has a story, so I would definitely have something to blog about, especially if something incredibly interesting (or irritating) has just occurred. 
• The great thing about technology nowadays is that I can write something on paper and just snap a picture of it and post it on my blog to serve as my blog entry. And because I frequently carry my trusty Moleskine with me, I have no excuse but a lack of time to write it.
4. Lose weight. Admittedly, I'm a little overweight, according to my BMI. I'm heavier than I should be for my height, so I want to try and get into the ideal body type without sacrificing too much. We (Kai and I) always keep telling ourselves to go out and do some jogging or go to the gym, but we never actually did that once last year, so now is definitely the time to do just that. Her rubber shoes are still rather pristine here in my shoe cabinet as if to emphasize the point. 
5. Read and read some more. Since I asked for quite a few books last year, now is the best time to crack some open and get to reading. The number of my "to-read" list has increased, and will increase by 1 since I'm (still) patiently waiting for a hard bound copy of Deadly Heat to arrive at our book stores. That might be the catalyst that sparks my reading bug to return, but we'll see.
6. Learn something new. Kai said she'd teach me to play the guitar, so we're eyeing to get a nice little one to replace the one she lost in the flood back in 2009, and as a way of teaching me the bloody instrument I never bothered to learn (unlike my siblings who are quite good at it).
7. Get inspired to write. I do this sporadically throughout the years until now, and most of my inspiration comes from talking through scenarios with Kai. My little fanfictions will always be here when I find inspiration, so I just want to get more of that forever. But a bigger project is always more interesting. That's not to say we're not already brewing one at present, but that's for us to know and you to find out, yeah? ;)

So much luck to me this 2014! And when February arrives, more luck should come in as it'll be the Year of the Horse! :D

Tidbit #15: Ambidexterity

Just a quick post on here before I head to bed. Earlier this year, I started a little side-project where I was trying to write with my right hand. I started with the alphabet dozens of times over, then stopped for quite a while. These past few weeks, I decided to rekindle that project and give my right hand the needed exercise to train it to write once more. If there's one thing I would like to be able to do in the coming years, it's to become ambidextrous.

The task may be daunting, but I'd like to say I'm getting some progress done as the days go by. In time, I'd be surprised if I passed a slip of paper to someone with a decent-looking handwriting, only to surprise them when I mention that I wrote it with my non-dominant hand.

So much like my post yesterday, I'll probably be populating my blog with my little journal entries as the year comes to a close, just to see if there actually is potential to get better. As long as it's legible, I want it to reach a point when it feels as natural and fluid as I would write with my dominant hand, without much of a hitch.

Ambidexterity, have at thee!

Pet-Project: Website Coding

So before March comes to a close, I decided to share one of the little activities I've been busying myself lately (that has little to do with work mind you). This is actually a little pet-project I do, though the goal isn't so much as publishing it to the web but still shows up on a web browser. Forgive the irony, but I'll get to answering that weird quip in a second.

I don't often mention that one of my absolutely favorite hobbies is to write stories in the form of roleplays, but when I do, it's always in relation to Kai and we do take some pride and effort to doing it whenever time allows us. Since we've expanded our repertoire of story worlds and universes real and fiction alike in which to portray characters and weave a story of our own, I have this little (okay, maybe not so little) tendency to keep things to some order, so I wanted to have a little space, even just internally, to keep things on record.

While we have the luxury of Dropbox and Evernote besides Blogger (duh) to keep track of some stuff, I wanted to actually apply some of the things I learned (okay fine, mostly self-study) to good use. But then again, there was just that excuse to make the experience a bit more interactive than just clicking on files that probably didn't make as much sense without visual prompts and stuff. Haha.

At the end of it all, I might end up inspired to make my own site again, to which I owe myself of nearly 4 years ago a pat on the back for chronicling this entry else I would have forgotten that title.

Bank System

銀行システム。（ぎんこうしすてむ）Ginkō shisutemu. trans. Bank System.

Pair project to be finished by tomorrow evening. We're almost there but still a long ways to go. I can't believe it takes most of the day to decipher specs and get code to run. Oh Java why must you be so picky. Dx

Oh well, TC and I are doing swell. Discovered something awesome after a day's work so we hope to finish in time for submission! We'll do our best!

Tomorrow Darren Criss will be taking the stage at the TriNoma Activity Center and I'm hoping to go and see him even if I don't have a seat to enjoy it. Hope Kai gets better too!!!

Life and Death Demo

生と死のデモ。（なまとしのでも）Nama to Shi no Demo. trans. Life and Death Demo.

So I thought I'd share a little home-made presentation for you all of my CS177 Graphics Programming final project. It's a demograph (sort of) entitled Life and Death. I believe I explained most everything in the video I took with my digicam (because CamStudio's audio doesn't work well with accompanying background music with the demo). I apologize for the bad quality. xP

Credits~

Programming was done using Visual C# and Microsoft XNA.

3D Models were done/exported from Google SketchUp and Blender.

Background music: 「紙か、悪魔か」trans. God or Demon from General Rouge no Gaisen Original Soundtrack

Concept inspired by Team Batista 2: General Rouge no Gaisen Japanese medical drama starring Nakamura Toru, Ito Atsushi and Nishijima Hidetoshi.