Preface
This piece is a record and reflection of my life from October 19 to October 27, 2022.
This week has been busy with work projects, with several consecutive days of overtime, but I’ve finally completed my part of the requirements. However, during the spare moments, I managed to go through introductory tutorials for several languages I’ve long wanted to learn, which was quite interesting. Additionally, the company arranged for me to give a technical presentation on smart contracts. I put effort into making a good PowerPoint presentation, and I must say, Apple’s Keynote is truly excellent - the magic move and some built-in animation effects are incredibly smooth.
I’ve also tinkered with several small websites and systems, making my starter page increasingly rich. Apart from that, due to some personal planning issues, I’ve decided to create bilingual versions of some of my previous projects and articles. In the future, I might write technical articles in English first and then translate them into Chinese (or vice versa?), except for weekly reviews. It feels like a lot of pressure, but I have to persist.
Pure Learning
This week, I’ve been engrossed in learning many new technologies. I’ve looked into the basic syntax of Lua, which I’ve been curious about for a while - it seems useful for writing scripts and small games. I’ve also done some introductory learning of C++, mainly to delve deeper into language mechanisms; this time, learning it has made me appreciate the ingenuity of language design even more. I’ve also reinforced my understanding of Rust’s basic syntax, which could be considered my second attempt at mastering it. Because I need to write some DApps, I’m also in the process of learning React and TypeScript.
I continue to read those challenging books, like “Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective (CSAPP)” and the newly released “Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (6th Edition)”. Progress is a bit slow, but I’ll take it step by step.
In fact, learning these doesn’t have such a strong purpose; most of them won’t be used immediately at work (which is often the main reason why I sometimes find work a bit uninteresting). Without much practical application, I might often forget them, but the learning process itself is very interesting. I’m gradually becoming fond of the Crash Course format - spending a few hours unveiling the mystery behind some technical terms or mastering some peculiar skills, feeling a sense of pure learning joy.
This seems to have been a long-standing habit. In university, I dabbled in learning several new foreign languages (of course, I gave up after a while; German as a second foreign language was somewhat mastered, but I don’t know when I’ll pick it up again - I regret not learning it properly), and learned the entire Adobe suite (many were a bit superfluous, but I did learn the useful ones quite well). Rather than the practical benefits a skill or a type of knowledge can bring, the motivation from exploration seems more important.
Currently, I also want to create some interesting things. I hope I can always find joy in what I do.
Miscellaneous
This section will record my inputs and outputs, as well as other things I find interesting.
Twitter Statistics System
Following the “twiyou” project by Twitter friend Ivory Mountain Liu Neng, I set up my own statistics system, which is quite interesting.
Blog System
Although I’ve often modified some theme settings before and even submitted PRs for the Hugo theme I use, I’ve never really delved into Hugo’s template system. I’ve spent the past few days studying it thoroughly and plan to write some shortcodes for use. It’s quite powerful.
The article section has been idle for a long time. I’ve actually been keeping records in Logseq, but I haven’t organized them meticulously. In the future, some content that may not be fully formed might be placed in the Notes module, which will be continuously updated.
Input
Books
- The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, currently revisiting.
- Programming in Lua, Fourth Edition, learned a bit of Lua, feels like an interesting language.
- Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (6th Edition)
Movies
- Au Revoir L’été, the visuals are quite good, with several classic scenes often seen in mixes, but the plot and pacing are quite mediocre. I spent most of the time just enjoying the music, adding several songs to my playlist - they’re great for video background music.
- Roma, a movie with incredibly slow rhythm and visuals, like a personal memoir, with some subtle metaphors in the context of the time, much like us who are at a loss in the current era.
- Everything Everywhere All at Once, it was incredibly popular a few months ago. I watched it tonight while working on my weekly review, and I was disappointed. It’s a bit bewildering, with inexplicable emotional transitions and plot twists. It feels like it’s trying to express too much and aims too high, but fails to support its core.
TV Series
- The Playlist, stories are often similar, although it doesn’t compare to “The Social Network” in my mind, but as an internet startup story, it’s remarkably not solely focused on programmers, which is refreshing. I admire the tech geeks in “The Coder”, but my favorite is still Martin - unrestrained, understanding that the business and real world are not just binary, and someone needs to bear the cost for its idealism. Also, many transition scenes in “The Lawyer” are stunning.
- House of the Dragon, I’m not really a Game of Thrones enthusiast. I stopped watching around the fifth or sixth season when I heard it had a bad ending, but I did read most of the books. I followed this because it was quite popular a few months ago. I almost gave up several times in the first few episodes, but I watched it sporadically to the end. I feel that such a grand worldview might be better suited for books to lay the groundwork, as the TV series always feels a bit disjointed.
Anime
- Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, also recommended by a friend, with a slightly fantastical setting of an ageless clan. Under the grand worldview, it tells the entire story from the perspective of the passage of time and the beginning and end of human relationships, offering a different viewpoint.
- Pantheon, a colleague mentioned that this anime involves parallel computing, resource pools, deadlocks, and mutual exclusion locks, so I was curious to watch it. The first few episodes were very interesting, but it became somewhat abstract towards the end, making it tiring to watch. Perhaps it’s because I watched it during lunch breaks and couldn’t ponder it carefully, but overall it’s still worth watching.
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