Ambidexterity Progress

5/22/14

Time for another quick writing exercise! I did say I wanted to be able to become ambidextrous, and I found out earlier today that I have better aim gripping a gun with my right hand. I tried it for kicks with one of the Nerf guns at the office. We drew a target on one of the whiteboards. I rarely hit the bullseye with my left, but after switching to my right, it was a bullseye off the bat! A few shots later I found myself getting into the swing of things. This will be something I can improve on!

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

November 26

Again, for those who may not decipher my handwriting.

11/26/13
5 more days. Today I started looking into a bit of javascript for work- related issues. Coding has been a rusty topic for me lately, if you exclude HTML at least. A little something for Google Docs I guess. This is the problem when you restrict CONDITIONAL FORMATTING!

...

In other news, we meet again Google Forms! It's been ages since I made one. If you end up forgetting some of its finger features (like I did), chances are you'd end giving yourself a facepalm when you finally rediscover it. In my case,  it was the summary of responses. Silly me.

Anyway,  I still haven't been able to find the best grip for my pen writing with my right hand. Hopefully time and practice will make it better.

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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!

That Same Old Testing Thing

I actually typed up a quick entry about this some time ago but I decided to take it down. But since it's gone online (this was a different article altogether), guess now would be the best time to promote it!

So Sir Mac (our Operations Manager) invited us developers to submit any blog entries to post to the website whenever we wanted. Since a tester-themed entry was long overdue (and that was about the only topic I could deliver anyway), I decided to give it a shot.

And it got approved! If you guys wanna have a read (and see my smug picture to boot):

That Same Old Testing Thing

TypeRacer

This post will be relatively short, but nevertheless good fun.

So today's topic is concerning TypeRacer, an online application that allows you to practice and compete with other online users or your friends to test your typing speed. I've actually signed on here since my freshman year in college that fateful afternoon during CS21a class when we were racing against one another.

Today in the office, several of my officemates were playing it and Nikka - who I had introduced the site to during my OJT days - practically endorsed me to try it. Surprisingly the results afterwards were astonishing, even for me. My average speed moved to 100wpm, which was just literally minutes ago in the vicinity of the 80's.

So yeah! 8D Wheeeeeeeee~

If you wanna give it a go: http://play.typeracer.com/

Affected by Typhoons

Yesterday was a stressful day. It was a day of panic and boredom at the same time it was almost frustrating. Why, you ask? Let's look at what happened.

My typical Tuesdays would normally begin with me waking up to my 5 AM alarm since I usually hitch a ride with my mom early in the morning to get to my 7:30 AM class. Rains and strong winds were both a factor in effectively waking me up after every attempt at trying to get back to sleep.

The night before I read an email from our Economics professor (the heathen 7:30 class) that due to the storm and the UAAP Finals Game 2 that was originally scheduled yesterday (but was rescheduled to Saturday at 3PM), she wouldn't be checking attendance but would still hold classes unless the admin suspends class. After some contemplation I decided not to go to class. I was lucky enough to decide that as I received a text from TC at around 6AM informing me of the suspension of classes. Happy with that, I sank back to get more sleep.

About an hour or two after, I woke up to the strong winds pounding harshly against my closed windows. Seeing that my fan was still breezing, I noted that the power was still okay and decided to charge some of my electronic gadgets, foreseeing a possible power outage later that day should the storm pursue. I also had the impending dilemma of finishing our group's game script that was due today. It was on Google Docs so I had the mind to download it to Word should anything bad happen. Not long after that the power start to fluctuate and eventually die down altogether, so I was inwardly happy to have done that else I was screwed.

Wanting to save battery I shut my laptop down and decided to work on a draft of the chapters I had yet to write down on pen and paper. Satisfied after writing down two chapters worth of script, I decided to take a break and take a nap since the pounding rain and winds just give me nothing more to do but that. I awoke around 4PM when I realized that the power had revived itself. I managed to watch a few minutes of the Game 1 replay before the power died again. Bored altogether, my sister came into my room wondering what to do before I broke out the question cards from my Harry Potter Scene It? game to pass the time, considering we were both Potterheads.

Soon after, dark came after another nap, and we three sibling had an early dinner with what little outdoor light there still was before we were plunged into pure blackness that the evening brought. Rain continued trickling down and soon my dad, and my mom came home from their work, and we all decided to go out to grab some internet time since power had still to return to our house. What was ironic was that half our street already had power, so it was pretty unlucky for us to still not have ours back. We spent the time from around 7PM until 10PM at Flapjacks, Techno Hub leeching off the free WiFi and giving the parents an opportunity to have some dinner for the lack of any.

During that span of time I took the opportunity to have a chat with Kai who was alone in the house, which was never a good thing since their house had tendencies of flooding during typhoons so of course I was worried for her. On the back of that, I still had to update the script with the draft I had constructed and compose two more chapters before I could put a pin on it and consider it done. I never got to finish it until we got home, where we found to our dismay that there was still no power. We ended up going to bed with the lack of anything more to do.

So on one hand, I should count my blessings that compared to others, Typhoon Pedring handicapped us by chucking away our power most of the day. On the other hand, the power of Pedring that's swept away trees and flooded streets and houses, inconveniencing a lot of people is no laughing matter. Stay safe everyone.

Writing Fever

So this little entry comes rather late for the simple fact that the very reason I'm typing up an entry this late into the night is because I've spent practically the whole day in front of a laptop typing away. Whether it's constructing words and sentences, backspacing or alt-tabbing to switch between windows to check sources, I can say that I spent a good portion of my day dedicated to getting thesis work done, which is actually saying something.

Between me and my partner Jason, I handle more of the paper content and coherence, as well as the art assets for the game, leaving most of the programming in his capable hands. I'll agree he tends to spazz out from time to time in agitation at failing to understand why his theory to get a method isn't working, but he gets the job done so there's not much for me to complain about. The guy's pretty smart in the programming department (the better among the two of us for sure), so I can count on him to get things done. It's all a matter of cracking the whip whenever necessary, especially when deadlines are looming.

Since he and I are one of the groups among the Affective thesis groups that are on par with the rest of the groups, I'm pretty confident that we can get our prototype working for our upcoming defense at the end of the week. Considering I've just sent the draft of our paper to our adviser crosses out one agenda off my writing list. Thankfully one less thing to worry about for the time being.

The other writing assignment I'm stressing over concerns the script for our game in our Game Design class. The deadline's on Wednesday and ideas are flying around in my head. Since I have the day planned out for tomorrow I figure I could get to work on that when I get home and just do things gradually from there. It's a fun and tedious task but at least I get to apply what I do for a hobby (roleplay~) with this assignment.

So after all that, I surprisingly come up with a lengthy post, which is a rarity among many of my blog entries. I'd add random smilies across the board but my eyes are closing and telling me to get some sleep if I want to even wake up to go to class tomorrow. So I bid you all goodnight~