Daily Life

Being able to enjoy yourself

Posted on 2013-04-30 21:31 by rv

Lately I'm in one of those moods where I have trouble finding myself. It's difficult to relax when the things you usually enjoy the most are making you on edge. I just can't seem to find my place. When I'm working I want to have free time. When I have free time I watch anime but feel like I should be doing something useful. So I do some programming instead but can't find the concentration or focus to do what I want. Then I play a game that I normally do to relax but instead I find it tedious and annoying. Then I go to sleep with a feeling of being on autopilot and the next day the cycle beings again.

The thing that mystifies me is, there is absolutely no external reason for this. Work is not too busy and I'm doing fun tasks. I feel appreciated and I'm doing useful stuff. The space game I'm working on is quite possibly the one thing that I am most motivated to write in my whole programming career. My other de-stressing activities have settled into a pattern that I'm very comfortable with, so no complaints there. The weather is good. I'm cycling a lot lately, feeling physically fulfilled. I'm going on a holiday with my girlfriend this weekend, so that's great too. Yet somehow I feel like there's something missing. Something else, something more I should be doing. And I can't for the life of me figure out what it is.

What am I missing?

Edit: perhaps related: Saturation of luxury.

Posted in Daily Life , Thoughts

Completely random blurbs of an ordinary life

Posted on 2013-04-28 15:35 by rv

I'm settling back into a pattern lately. The weather has been nice lately so I've been doing a lot of cycling. I consistently find myself overestimating distances in Greater London. The area really isn't that big when you're on a bike. For two weeks in a row now I've been meeting up with Kamil at a place at equal distance from both our homes. Then we cycle outwards from there into the countryside. Today Terry joined us and we happened across a nice airfield and a very narrow countryside road right on top of a ridge, offering great views at both sides.

The bike is doing great. The Long Haul Trucker feels very comfortable long-distance, especially the seating position, which is a likely indication that my previous frame was indeed a bit too small for me. The thing I don't like about it is the saddle, though. It feels really uncomfortable after a while, and I'll probably order a better one today.

Weird moment during lunch: I was trying to convince Kamil that I couldn't just up and fly to a nice country tomorrow for a holiday, even if I wanted to. Kamil responded by showing me flight prices to Japan for Monday: 590GBP, entirely within my budget. My company wouldn't fire me as long as I did some work while on holiday, so a trip would be totally feasible. I'm really quite lucky to work for Potato. They're very relaxed about their remote working policy, and I think it's getting results. Anyway, long story short, now I feel like a boring person for not going on a trip. But I can live with that.

I bought a shaver yesterday. I figured that I don't usually have a distinctive haircut or style so I might as well save money by cutting it myself. I started doing it myself in front of the mirror but soon Xiyu stepped in (or had to :S) and did a more proper job of it. Long hair short. Now I'm ready for summer.

Taxes: I finished the HMRC self assessment tax return filing thingie today. It was long, tedious and mildly complicated. But given the complexity of the rules involved I think HMRC is actually doing a pretty good job. There's lots of help items everywhere in case you get lost, and the whole process is quite transparent. Well, the 'how' is quite transparent. The 'why' is, like anything government-related, a complete mystery. Also: if you're working on your own in the UK and don't have a Limited company yet, set one up now! The tax benefits are enormous.

I've been rather content lately, both in daily life and in looking towards the future. Finding a sustainable lifestyle is a continuing process, and my life is far from stable yet, but things are stabilizing, and I've re-realized that I'm not in a hurry. I can do things at my own pace and stuff happens when I want it to. Now all that's left for me to do is to get filthy stinking rich. And change the world. One step at a time.

Now, time to clean my chain.

Posted in Daily Life

Obstacle detection via wifi signal strength

Posted on 2013-04-12 12:17 by rv

Every once in a while the signal on my wifi drops below -80dB. I've got a directional antenna for my desktop computer so I can pick up my landlord's wifi, which is just at the edge of usable range. I bought a cheapass wifi extender when I first moved here, but the thing is so crap that it keeps crashing on heavy load, so I bought an antenna instead and now connect to the main wifi. I use inSSIDer to determine the optimal position of the very short antenna, but the strange thing is, that optimal position changes every other week or so. Eventually the signal strength drops from ~-79dB (very usable, about 2 megabyte/s) to -86dB (completely unusable, frequent disconnects, internet unbrowseable).

Why? Are my neighbours constantly moving things around, placing thick slabs of concrete between the router and my apartment? Or are they moving the router around? Or is it the weather? I wonder if, with some calculations based on signal strength of the wifi networks around you, you can detect roughly the position of moving objects based on the signal strength of each wifi network. A side project perhaps, if I weren't already working on 3 other side projects..

Posted in Daily Life , Tech

A pure day

Posted on 2013-04-06 23:22 by rv

It would be hard to get a better day than today. In the morning I slept, in the afternoon the weather was awesome. I considered going out for cycling, but I felt rebellious and stayed inside the whole day, doing a little programming project that will have no practical value but feels greet to work on anyway. During sunset I felt like rebelling against my rebelliousness so I went out cycling anyway. I was out of breath at the first hill. Need more training. Or less hills. In the evening I did more programming and spontaneously felt like going out to buy drinks late at night. The stores were closed but it's not bad because the sky smells like summer again. Beautiful!

Posted in Daily Life

Back home

Posted on 2013-04-01 11:17 by rv

The internet speed is monsterful, which is a good thing since the weather seems like it could start lumming at any moment now. Definitely not an apricious day. It's doubly unfortunate that my stomach is curmuring like crazy and I must go out to procure supplies. I hope I won't be curglaffed..

Posted in Daily Life

Reversing day and night

Posted on 2013-03-14 03:57 by rv

It was inevitable. For weeks I've been falling asleep at 1Am and waking up at 9AM, even before my alarm goes off. But all during that time, something felt off. It just didn't seem like my natural rhythm. But now, at 4AM (again), I feel much better. Looks like my body has reset itself. Back to normal.

Posted in Daily Life

It's 4AM

Posted on 2013-03-13 03:51 by rv

..and my mind is losing coherence, so here's some short thoughts.

I was standing in Euston station today talking to my friend, when suddenly I noticed a 20 pound note on the floor right next to him. It wasn't his, and nobody else claimed it, so I took it home with me. I'm not sure why, but instead of feeling euphoria and happiness about my unexpected luck, I feel as if I've undeservedly gained karma that I am now afraid of losing in some horrible way. I wonder if something bad will happen to me tomorrow.

There are many ways to do programming, and the spectrum between startup mvp hacker dude and enterprise software developer is very wide. There's also the difference between people who organize things internally in their own mind and externally by form of documentation. I will not advocate the internal way of organizing here, but I will say that it requires a way of thinking that people who are intrinsically external-organizing cannot understand. Externals and internals are meant to clash, I guess.

People keep accusing me of acting like an old man. This is true, but in my case, I can reverse the aging process. I believe that my acting is not because I have nearly reached the age of 30, instead it's that I'm reaching maturity in the current (London) stage of my life. Age doesn't matter, stage in life matters, and changing states will reset you.

That being said, I've never really believed that changing location could make me happy. I believe that changing location may help increase the happiness that is already there, but that happiness has to come from somewhere. I think the happiness comes from accepting the situation that you're in and realizing that you can be happy with the way things are, or even if things were infinitely worse. But given that, there's things you could do to make yourself even more happy, such as changing location.

I think I managed to say something incredibly pessimistic and something incredibly optimistic in the same post. Go brain.

Posted in Daily Life , Thoughts

Glorious

Posted on 2013-02-19 13:39 by rv

A good day today.

Posted in Daily Life

A day

Posted on 2013-02-06 21:07 by rv

I went to my local fast-food shop today and bought a nice chicken meal. I had no cash left so I gathered up all my small coins and managed to find enough for a meal. This is not me being poor, this is just me being too lazy to walk to the ATM.

As I paid for my meal, the cashier noticed that one of the coins I paid with, an extremely shiny 2 pound coin, was in fact a new 2013 coin and near-mint. It turns out he collects coins from all over the world. He said that every weekend he goes to car boot sales and buys up whatever coins he can find/afford, and people know him by name and know when to call him when they find good coins. He's aiming to be in the Guinness book of world records, which apparently does not contain a world record yet for the most amount of coins collected.

And I thought: that's really nice. He seriously brightened up when he noticed the near-mint coin. I'm pretty sure I made his day. I hope he gets his record. And I hope that I can be as happy a person as he is.

Don't forget what you have.

Posted in Daily Life , UK