Giving Asian men a fighting chance:

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Admin

China loves to involve foreigners within it’s country, and invariably mixed relationships have become commonplace. In Shanghai it is no different, there are a lot of Chinese-foreigner connections happening, even though it is only a small part of the population. And some of these connections continue past a fling.

One thing rarer than inter-racial relationships is the opportunities that Chinese men have to find a nice foreign girl to relate to. The balance weighs heavily on the side of Chinese girls with foreign guys.

But I think I have found the answer…

I was having a conversation with a girl about Western and Chinese perceptions of beauty, she felt that she had them both figured out pretty well and could switch between the two. To demonstrate this she proceeded to predict the ‘type’ of girl I would find attractive. Given that I have a broad view of beauty she was still spot on.

The reason I think this is the case is because the west has discovered its Asian flavour of women, the type of Chinese girl that we(men) find beautiful. We love our small geisha-like girls or our freckled Lucy-liu’s with ovoid eyes and incredible smile.

But when thinking about sex symbols for Asian men, hmmm, either Jackie Chan, Jet or Bruce lee. All know how to beat up 10 guys at once which is great for men to admire and girls to feel safe, but sex appeal? Hmm, not from foreign women.

Asian men need to discover their western version of sex appeal. What do women of the west want? Kicking ass is only good when in trouble, not on a date. And all those muscle are great, but nothing compares to deep eyes, a great smile and a sizzling look that says, ‘I want you’.

The key for asian men to discover that combination is through Hollywood. We need to see an Asian actor in a heart throb role in Hollywood without kicking ass, then we might see an increase in foreign women with local men.
Once women see how Chinese men ARE men this will become a reality.

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Forgiveness vs Judgment

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Admin

Forgiveness and Judgment have their place in life.

When I do something wrong I want forgiveness and understanding now and don’t want judgment in the same time frame. Sharing something that I feel bad about makes me vulnerable, especially because it is the harder task to complete, at least in the short term. When I share I know there are two ways that the listener could react. This is oversimplified, but the response could be one of fundamentally forgiveness or judgment. One feeling will dominate this situation, rarely will it be so clear cut -normally a mix of the two.

I wish that the process of forgiveness was as short as possible and that the judgment would cause as small an impact as possible. I think it is just as important as the listener to commit to forgiveness as it is to commit to judgment, and more specifically, commit to processing the impact of actions good or bad. Saying things are ok when they still have an impact is not good for you or your relationships.

Why do we shy away from hard words about actions? I guess we could talk about the relative impact of negative feedback being greater than positive impact. Within business it is estimated that negative feedback is something like 30 times more ‘powerful’ than a positive impact.
It is so easy to fall into the trap of wanting someone to do the best for us, sometimes even going so far as getting angry when they don’t. And yet, when we make a mistake, the judgment is more then unwelcome. I think the importance of processing the impact of a decision and not underselling or dismissing those actions is vital to your growth as a person and the healing of a relationship. This will also allow us to appreciate and accept forgiveness for choices that aren’t so great.

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Gadgets!!! Tablets!! and Phones, oh my!

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Admin

In the last few months there have been some blurring lines within our smaller computing devices. It was evident when Steve Jobs declared that ‘we live in a post-pc age’. There is a shift happening in the roles computers have in our lives.

First, we moved from desktop pcs to laptops.
Second, we moved from laptops to netbooks.

Meanwhile, phones developed rapidly to meet in the middle.

First, mobile phones can make calls and send SMS
Second, smartphones like the android family and iphone are serious challengers for the majority of work that is done on larger computers.

In the last few months 2 devices have crossed over this boundary.

Motorola Atrix safely stuck in the laptop docking station -image from otakku.com

The Motorola Atrix is an android phone which comes with a docking station that turns this dual-core phone monster into a netbook with mouse and full keyboard. An additional docking option will allow you to use your phone as a nettop for your tv or other screen. If you read the reviews for this device you can see it is not as smooth as one would like. It seems, though, that the concept works as a prototype. With such a steep price tag it won’t be disruptive but does however illustrate some cool, new ideas.

The Eee Pad Transformer is the second device which helps to blur the lines between devices and computers. Apple released the ipad in the similar disruptive fashion that the iphone invaded the smartphone market. Since Apple took

The Eee Pad with full keyboard and netbook experience

charge of this market android devices have been playing catch-up, and only recently have we started seeing devices that come even close to competing with the current second generation ipad. Asus has attempted to focus on the area that Apple prides itself on avoiding -expansion. The Transformer can be connected to the docking station which provides extra battery, extra USB ports and an SD card slot. From all accounts Asus have released a much more polished product than the Motorola Atrix and they are certainly finding their market with a fantastic price point. Time will tell if users wish for a simpler experience or more flexibility.

It seems that we are reaching a stage where phones and computers will cross over and be able to complete many common tasks. The choice we make about which device we use will be more based on the complexity and size of the task rather than just going to the computer.

And so now to the idea…

THE IDEA:

This is where the idea comes in. All these expansion devices should offer methods for enhanced connectivity that will allow for not just additional ports but further processing power. For example, connecting a number of phones together and then connecting them to the computer allowing for multiple touchpads which can be assigned to different controls. This would be super helpful for audio where each phone could process an affect, or in photoshop where each phone could display a different palette or plugin that it controls and free up more screen realestate as well as minimise mouse-clicks. This processing power could also be built into other devices such as displays, speaker systems and hard drives. With everything designed to give back more processing power than it needs.

The second level of work on these devices after shared inputs and interfaces would be for the processing chips on board to be run in parallel. Users being able to select one central device as the brain (control can even be passed around depending on which software is being run. Apps –> Software) which can help share the processing load wherever there are idle chips.

What this would look like in the audio example is this. Rather than the touchscreen of the phone being set to control the FX inputs of a reverb unit, the whole reverb FX processing could be handled by the phone and take some overhead away from the PC.

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Software challenges in the current climate -guest post

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Admin

Today’s post is from my brother, some inspired thoughts about the new challenges within software design that was related to this article about the development that came with the new Chevy volt. The topic came about through exploring the type of challenges that come out of managing large, fragmented and modular projects such as was the case with the software and hardware development of the chevy volt.

Here was his thoughts about the tools that help to manage these types of development.

There are a few tools.  Most of the tools are practices more than actual software.  For example, to help minimize integration issues, larger projects will require things like

  • SRS’s (Software Requirements Specs)
  • Functional&Non-functional requirements
  • interface and API documentation

The catch is, though documentation helps alleviate the issue, it also generates yet another product that needs to be kept in sync with the code.  It is quite frequent to see documentation that is out of date with the code being developed, to the point where it is contradictory.

Other processes are things like change management, version control etc.  All intended to slow down changes (or properly version & control) changes made to program behaviour from an external perspective. Others help identify system risks (e.g., if I change this interface, what is the likely impact, what kind of bugs will it raise, how difficult or subtle will the change be etc.).

Some existing software tools simply work on trying to make this documentation “easier” to generate somehow.  These fall into two categories:

  • allowing code to be autogenned from the diagrams (aka “Any one can program it just requires design”… a mindset that has some truths, but can easily be taken to the point of ridiculous)
  • auto-genning diagrams from code (some fancy flow charts actually work quite well).

There are even some languages that specifically work to help this by using what’s called “design-by-contract” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_contract), the key one being Eiffel.  These still all suffer from the problem that your teams need to somehow work closely together.

I honestly think that tools like DVCS’s (e.g., Bazaar) help a lot with this, as it means changes can be passed around a distributed team or set of teams with much greater efficiency than traditional CVCS’s would ever allow.  But… as the article hints at, software management is still in its infancy, and really desperately needs better tooling and processes.

From my perspective & experience with the Linux world, high-level system integration really requires the following:

  • Small WELL-DEFINED parts.  Don’t make an all-singing-all-dancing part… it must always be small and very specific things.  This makes all the following easier to achieve
  • Frequent small updates to each component to allow behavioural changes to ripple out as quickly as possible.  This means jumping from version 1.0 to 2.0 shouldn’t happen all at once, but should roll out slowly as this allows both sides of the fence to more naturally integrate behaviours
  • Low level unit tests on both sides of the fence to ensure consistent behaviour internally
  • API level tests to ensure system behaviour remains fixed OR system behaviour changes are successfully identified (system being the overall code base, not just the internal bits that unit-tests target)
  • Integration tests all the way up (e.g.,  testing system A+B, then (A+B)+C)
  • Versioned API’s between components
  • Solid bug tracking & change tracking
  • All testing HIGHLY automated

A lot of this is actually pretty close to how linux works.  This doesn’t deal with people in various roles though, and factors such as committee vs. individual control (e.g., a person per component is probably a good way to go). Those require some more analysis into how much a human mind can hold, vs. how much benefit a collection of minds can hold vs. various trade-offs in knowledge etc. (e.g., democratic elections tend to mean a lot of people follow each other… so not everyone deserves a vote in software.  How many people should vote, and who should they be?)

Philip Peitsch.

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Electronic wallets, server-side or client-side

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Admin

So, I’m studying E-commerce at the moment and am working through a chapter about how to simplify online payments. They suggested two very common techniques. One is a server-side storage of cash, similar to a bank account. This means if the merchant website accepts payments from this server you can save time with purchases, all details are hosted on their servers and security is maintained by them for many users. The other common alternative is a client-side wallet. This involves users downloading software onto each of their electronic devices that they wish to use for payments.

I think I would like to see another alternative… similar to what is happening with things like the social site diaspora. What about decentralizing the storage of these e-wallets. Allowing personal users who have a server to run and maintain their own version of this electronic wallet. It limits the risk of hackers gaining access to thousands of accounts and also effectively allows each user to maintain ownership over their personal details.

I am a huge fan of people developing online identities, but also, of individuals having control over that information. Being able to run your own invoice server, electronic wallet, personal id for social sites like facebook etc or generally being able to keep this type of information separate from institutions and private from companies that could exploit that information will be an improvement on individual privacy that I would much prefer.

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Filling in the gaps

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Admin

I have noticed on some of the individual airline pages some very coarse graphic information about seasonal and current demand for airline tickets to particular destinations when selected so you can get a feel for when you are travelling and the basic price fluctuation. I would love to see this being done by more airlines, and even other industries that have seasonal fluctuating prices.

Sometimes I am more interested in going rather than the destination. I don’t need to know the cost to a particular destination, I just want to know I’m getting a good deal. I figure more people will travel then currently travel during off-peak times, and to a greater variety of places.

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So now I am becoming part of the machine.

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Admin

Just found this popunder (which i guess technically is spam) from Adobe. Very catchy thoughts that has me very intrigued.
Here is what it eventually links to:

http://www.adobe.com/choice/openmarkets.html

Which seems to be a big cannon aimed at Apple’s desire to close the web. I have been frustrated with Apple’s apparent ‘need’ to limit people’s freedom when using their software.

I wonder if apple will eventually be forced to change its methods. One of the major weaknesses of open source is this; software is developed one of two ways -through critical mass of interest from the OS community which breeds programmers and developers with good enough abilities to work on the software, or, through the software being adopted or spearheaded by a larger corporation or individual who makes it their responsibility to continue developing the software.

Unfortunately this means that in so many ways open source software can trail in adoption, particularly by the general population.

My fear is companies that push closed standards will win out on the internet in the end, motivated mainly by their vested interests and promise of profits.

just my opinion.

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Forcing the issue.

Posted on May 5, 2010 by Admin

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Don’t force your opinions on me!” in conversation? Possibly directed at you. It is normally said in a way that implies an injustice is being declared because an opinion is being passionately discussed. What is being implied here is that it is fine for a person to have a different opinion, just don’t discuss it with anyone, or don’t share reasons for carrying that opinion.
We have conflicting opinions on varying levels about many topics and with many people, especially with people that share close connections. To not allow someone to have a different opinion to you is considered to be disrespectful, and rightly so… The majority of people realise that they are not the centre of the universe and need to accommodate others around them to exist comfortably.

Forcing an opinion on someone else, I think, happens a lot less then we believe. Where someone actually gets ‘forced’ to accept an opinion is within a situation when a person is actually powerless to do anything except accept that opinion.

The situations that I most hear this phrase used, however, is by competent, intelligent people who are independent in thought and spirit. These are not powerless people. Their response in this situation speaks more volumes about a mind being closed to influence. The risk here is that it can be used to bypass intelligent thought for the sake of suppressing a discussion or topic. There are times when discussions become overwhelming and threatening and it certainly is reasonable to cease the conversation if you wish, but trotting out this phrase does not improve the situation.

There is a big lie that is being covered up by the phrase, “Don’t force your opinions on me.” That lie is that by stopping the conversation, the opinion doesn’t have an effect, or that by not entering into a discussion about any of these opinions that it ceases to affect. This is definitely not true!!!
In fact, by refusing to discuss a particular topic or issue, what is effectively being said is, “I will force my opinion on you and I won’t give you an avenue to communicate how this affects you.” The act of talking about these topics is not and should not be an issue.

The truth that I see around me is we all accommodate and tolerate different opinions, even the ones we don’t have to. By talking about them we can figure out which issues are important and then can either be better understood and so better accommodated or identified as areas of work for both people to maintain a successful community together.

what a rant today…

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Reasonable and unReasonable

Posted on April 1, 2010 by Admin

It seems to be the destiny of reasonable people to ‘understand’ and tolerate fools. Why are we so understanding of those that hurt us? We almost trap ourselves into paralyzing inaction about doing anything that could even hint at our own loss of character, and get taken advantage of because of it. In Christianity we focus on forgiveness first, but we are so quick to forgive for our own piece of mind and rarely investigate and thoroughly process how we are actually affected by situations.

I would say, for the most part we don’t want to think about the ‘bad’ stuff and so try to suck it up and get over it as quickly as possible. I don’t think that is the best way to figure things out… what are we missing?

Couple that with a nieve understanding of judgement when in truth we make judgements about things all the time, in every day life. We have to to survive. Judgements about friendships, about business decisions, about how to react to situations in life. But we don’t judge the big things… or if we attempt to then the accused trump out their self righteous belief that they, for some reason, should not be judged and we are less of a person for doing so.

The truth is, at some point, those perpetrators made a judgement about our ‘reasonableness’ and decided that, they, for whatever reason could get away with it. And then what… when they don’t get away with it, or they get called on it by reasonable people -suddenly they feel oppressed and judged.

Transference by them? Possibly. Okay to do? Don’t think so.
All I know is that you should never shy away from making the difficult call just because you would risk repercussions.

It’s amazing how information, honesty and truth reveal unreasonable people for who they really are. Don’t be silent while unreasonable people continue to be that.

I read a quote somewhere about WWII that summarized things this way.
The greatest crimes in Germany were not just committed by the perpetrators… but by the silence of reasonable people.

I never want to be that person.

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Why aren’t personal ethics more of an influencing factor in legal cases?

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Admin

It seems that far to many people spend lots of time doing things that are ‘legal’ but that really aren’t ‘ethical’.

By ethical i mean choices made for the good of others. I would love to see ethics become a separate arm of the law that can help ensure people are always working for a greater good. With ethical standards that can be debated in a similar way that law is but that can still be enforceable. Too often it seems that the law fails when big money is involved.

I consider that having an authoritative body focused purely on enforcing the attitudes of people and not just the legalities would help discourage those who would flaunt the legal system.

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