What have I been up to?

This is the first time I am keeping a blog like this. I actually have one other blog which I update some of the thoughts I have whenever I feel like I want to, maybe once a month, maybe once a year. This is going to be a challenging task for me, cos I don't have the habit of blogging. I wonder what I should say and what I should not, hehe...

I managed to put up a Facebook profile badge and an embedded Google wave gadget. Yay!

Why this blog name? 

If you have noticed, I have changed the blog name. It is called “Stop! Look forth-back-forth. Run!” This phrase came from the phrase "Stop. Look left, look right, look left again. Walk.", something that your school/parents would have taught you since young. This blog has three levels of significance.

1) Blog
Blog title is a branding. So just to make sure it sounds catchy enough to attract attention. Hope I have done so.
2) Programming
Make sure you don't cause any bug. Stop for a while, check your code then run your program. LOL.
3) Life
I think it would be good to be brave but careful in life. Be brave to try something new and be careful in the process of planning. When you recognise your target, head for it!

I have watched the two recommended videos "The Last Lecture" and "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish". I watched both some days ago, so what I am gg to blog below would be those statements that left me the most impression. I looked through their transcript again to search for those statements that touched me the most.

The Last Lecture

Randy Pausch is an excellent speaker and he presents his speech in a very humorous way.

The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.

We should not give up when we face obstacles; he used the metaphor of a brick wall very well.

Oh yes, I just remembered I read about sth like this recently. I think it was a story in Chinese, but I can't really rmb where exactly I read it from. So I would just provide the translation here based on my memory. It was a story teaching us abt financial education in English. I accidentally come across it again=P

It is about a person who is very interested in beverage business. So he came out with a drink called 1UP, but it didn't sell. He did not give up, and he improvised the drink to 2UP, yet it didn't sell. He didn't give up, and he came out with a newer version 3UP, still it didn't sell. He kept improvising his drink until 6UP, but still it didn't sell. So he gave up. Years later, someone came out with the drink 7UP.

This story is not the truth about how 7UP came about, haha. It is rather an analogy that we shouldn't give up so easily. And I believe many of the time it is the stubbornness and the determination that make us move on.

And I said, Andy, I just gave a two-week assignment, and they came back and did stuff that if I had given them a whole semester I would have given them all As. Sensei, what do I do? And Andy thought for a minute and he said, you go back into class tomorrow and you look them in the eye and you say, “Guys, that was pretty good, but I know you can do better.” And that was exactly the right advice. Because what he said was, you obviously don’t know where the bar should be, and you’re only going to do them a disservice by putting it anywhere. And boy was that good advice because they just kept going.

It was so funny and so enlightening. Yes, it is indeed very true. There is no boundary in life in achieving something. It is often yourself who set the boundary for yourself. For instance, you become lazy and sloppily finished off something, so you don’t do well. We must always hope for something better, must always be strict on ourselves. There is always room for improvement.

Stay Foolish

Steve Jobs speech is more solemn and short, but is very meaningful.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

My interests have always been very diverse. There is a saying about one possessing many knifes but none is sharp. I don’t wish to be one of those; I want to have at least a sharp knife. But I believe I don't have to make all the knives sharp, and it is alright to keep many blunt knives, but at least know the right knife to sharpen at any particular time of life. I really hope the dots will connect.