Minuscule Insight – Shoes

Sometimes it is good to have small feet so you can always see the other person’s point of view.

Security

This recent article got me thinking a little bit about internet security. It’s actually quite sad that I don’t think about it more often, considering I’m an electrical and computer engineer and I  work 8-12 hours a day in front of a computer connected to the net.

I think when people think about internet security, most think of things like viruses, or trojans, or some hacker out there trying to get access to your files. But chances are, these things will almost never happen to you as long as you 1.) don’t open questionable emails/attachments and 2.) don’t visit questionable websites.

Considering that firewall and spyware removal is included as part of Windows and the abundance of anti-viruses out there, it it actually pretty difficult to get malicious software installed on your computer. I think the last time I got an actual virus was in high school.

So no, the type of internet security people should actually be thinking about are the small stuff, the stuff that aren’t really intuitive. Things like that described in the article.

I think most people just don’t realize that when they’re using a public hotspot, they are essentially broadcasting everything they’re doing on the internet to whoever else is in the area. And let’s be honest, if someone can pretend to be you to your email provider, how long would it take them to access every other account you own? This is also why you should encrypt your home wireless, not just so your neighbors can’t use it to torrent movies.

The other thing I’ve noticed that people don’t do is tiering their access information. i.e. Having passwords and email accounts with different level of security. This one should really be common sense. Don’t use the same password for your bank account as you do for the free account you have to make to play that super cool flash game. Likewise, don’t use your main email when signing up for that neat new media site that all your friends are talking about.

The truth of the matter is that the strength of your password is almost never going to come into question. Unless you’re some high profile person, or have access to high profile information, the chance of someone actually trying to brute force your password is virtually non-existent. The time and resources it would take to brute force the password for my bank account probably costs more than what I have in that account.

Okay, let’s end with a mildly related xkcd comic.

Statistic

Over the weekend I found out that one of my friends had cancer and had to have surgery. Last month I found out a friend from high school has been fighting leukemia for the past 2 years. I have two friends who were married and divorced. I have friends who were diagnosed with high cholesterol, eating disorders, you name it. It’s a sad realization to know that I’m hitting the age where those statistics you hear on TV, or at charity fundraisers are becoming a reality.

Back when I was younger, the statistics were simple: “98 out of 100 people you know are healthy as a horse.” I never did understand that saying though. Horses don’t get sick?

Now it’s more like 75 out of 100, in 10 years it’ll be less, and in another 10 years not only will it be less, but the statistics will be more grim. It won’t be about failed marriages or too much red meat. It might not even be about fighting cancer. It’ll be things like “One in 6 people by heart attacks” or  ”One in 10 from a stroke.”

I don’t think about death too often. It’s just not a pleasant thing to think about. It’s not that I’m afraid of dying. I mean what is there to be scared of? I don’t believe in a hell. How can there be eternal torment if you are already dead? Pain and agony is kind of meaningless if there’s nothing to back it up. You’ll just get used to it. And if it’s just total oblivion afterwards, then… oh well? Can’t really complain about nothingness.

No.. what scares me about death isn’t that it’s going to happen to me, but rather that it’s going to happen to the people around me. That at a snap of a finger, the people I care the most about and mean the world to me can just be gone.  To me that finality, that end of opportunity, is more frightening than the most gruesome of hells.

I don’t like the idea of people around me becoming statistics. Points and percentages next to some 1-800 number on the TV screen, or on some stupid slideshow during a fancy dinner. When I was younger, I wanted to be a superhero so I can save the world. These days the only people I want to save are the ones I love and care about, and the only statistic I want them to be is the portion of the population that lived a long, long fruitful life without any regrets. Other people can go fill in the rest.

You know… I’ve become quite the selfish bastard over the years.

Minstrel’s Corner – By Ear

Something I’ve always thought as a neat ability among musicians is the ability to play music by ear. By this, I don’t mean those people who can replicate exactly everything they hear. That takes a certain level of talent that I’ll probably never achieve. I simply refer to the ability to think of a tune in your head and then produce it on your instrument.

In theory, it’s not a particularly complicated technique. You just need to be able to identify the pitch you want to play, and then it’s just a matter of pressing the right key. Once you get good enough, you’ll eventually skip the middle step and go straight from the pitch to the instrument.

Here’s a pretty cool program I’ve been using to practice this. It throws out random note(or chords) and asks you to identify it. Like everything else, it just comes down to finding the time to practice.

Life Lessons

It should be no surprise to hear that I spent a large percent of my childhood(and to a much lesser extent, my current life) playing video games. And while I’ll fully admit that the time wasted in front of the screen could’ve probably been put to better use elsewhere, I didn’t exactly come out with nothing for all the effort I put in. So here’s a list I’ve came up with showing all the wonderful things I’ve learned from playing games:

Travel Skills – This is probably the only thing useful that came out of playing World of Warcraft all those years. Namely, map reading skills and how to travel via public transportation. I shouldn’t be surprised I guess, the DC metro map is like child’s play compared to the monstrosity that are the flightpaths for WoW.

Money Management – Video Game: Save money, buy giant sword. Real Life: Save money, buy furniture?

Vocabulary – Mostly terms related to medieval armory… but it did come in useful during my SATs!

Musical Skills – Rock Band.

Motor Skills – Various hand-eye coordination skills. Not as useful as one would think.

Typing Skills – Back in the day when voice chat wasn’t as prevalent in games, typing was the only way to talk to people online. Faster typing = less death by goblin hordes. It was a pretty good incentive to learn how to type fast. Unfortunately it was also an incentive to get people to start typing like they’re missing a chromosome.

Social Skills – You wouldn’t think so, given the bad rap that video games have for creating anti-social basement-dwellers, but I would argue the correlation goes in the other direction. For me, gaming is very much a social activity. Almost all of my favorite games involve some kind of multi-player. This is especially true for MMOs (although I don’t play anymore), which is all about the teamwork and building social relationships.

All Consuming – Tomatoes and Eggs

I keep meaning to take pictures for these, but I always forget whenever I make them, and by the time I remember it is usually eaten, or just doesn’t look very appetizing. I guess that is the unfortunate curse of perishables. I’ll try and remember for the next one.

Anyways.

I’ve met a lot of Chinese people in my life. It is one of the perks of being Chinese. There are a lot of us and we tend to gravitate towards the same places and do the same kind of things. One of these things is apparently the ability to make a Chinese dishes called “Tomatoes and Eggs.” I don’t know if there’s a formal name for it, but that’s what I’ve called it my whole life (in Chinese of course).

The recipe for the dish is pretty simple:

4 Tomatoes
4 Eggs(scrambled)
Soy Sauce

Mix together and cook for 10-20 minutes.

Really nothing remarkable. But literally every Chinese person I have ever met knows how to make some variation of this dish. What’s really interesting though is that despite its popularity, I have never seen this dish for sale in a restaurant of any sort, nor have I seen anyone make it when we’re invited over for dinner. I think it’s just so common and simple that people are embarrassed to make it for other people.

As a result, I think it ends up being one of those dishes that just gets passed on from generation to generation within the family. This in turn produces some interesting variations in the recipe between families. I’ve known some people who like to add sugar or scallions or MSG. The amount of soy sauce is super variable. Sometimes it’s made super dark, or very light. It could be a dry dish, or cooked until it’s almost a sauce.

Things like this is why I find family recipes really fascinating. It’s almost like it has got its own genetics that mutate and propagate as it gets passed from generation to generation. I think the modern age has kind of killed a bit of that. With widespread books and the internet, a lot of recipes are becoming pretty homogeneous. So sad.

Multi-Tasking

Something I’ve always kind of envied is the ability to multi-task. This includes any number of things, like watching TV while working, or carrying two conversations at a time, or talking on the phone while playing a game. None of which I can do.

For me, I can only keep focus on one thing and everything else is background. So the only things I can really multi-task are manual tasks that I can do without thinking, like cleaning, or exercising, etc. For everything else it’s one at a time or none at all. So when I’m driving, I can’t listen to anything that requires comprehension (language tapes, books on tapes, podcasts, etc.), even conversations with the passengers have to be kept pretty light. When I’m on the phone I can’t chat with someone on IM at the same time.

Just the other weekend, I was over at Dan’s and he was playing a game while listening to baseball on the radio. All I was doing was watching him play the game, and I couldn’t even hear the radio anymore, it might as well have been the refrigerator humming. This became particularly funny, because Dan would regularly make remarks about something that the announcer said on the radio, and every single time I would go “What?” and then gave him a look like he’s pulling crazy talk out of the air.

90 Minute Sketch – Sock Puppet

Man… I’ve got nothing today. I looked through all my stuff. Zip, zero, natta.  It’s just one of those weeks where everything’s due, so you’re super busy, but then nothing goes quite your way. On top of that my spirit has been kind of down, but let’s not get into that. I’ll save the emo for a Monday post.

So without further ado, here’s a sock puppet I drew in MS paint for giggles. Quality work I tell ya.

Here’s to hoping for better content next week.

Favorite

My Favorite…

Candy: Swiss Chocolate

Music Genre: Alternative/Punk

Way to Spend Time: With Friends

Food: Chinese (Authentic)

Drink: Tea

Hobby: Video Games

Book: Ender’s Game

Movie: The Incredibles

Place: The Alps

Sport to Play: Ping-pong(?)

Sport to Watch: Soccer

Planet: Jupiter

The Minibar – Wines

Let us talk about wines. Actually this is suppose to be a new series where I talk about alcoholic beverages in general, but let’s be honest. I’m not a huge beer drinker, and most of the time I don’t know the name of the mixed drinks handed to me, never mind what’s in it. So here we mostly talk about wines.

I took a course back in Cornell on wines, but these days I am super reluctant to tell people about such a factoid. For some reason, whenever people find out that you have “formal” education on wine, they suddenly expect you to know everything there is to know about every label and every vintage ever made. I’ve had people go “Oh hey, you’ve taken a wine class before, which one of these is better?” When I look, they’re usually two names I’ve never heard of, and are the same variety from the same region. (Protip: Pick the cheaper one, if you don’t know better.)

For a while now, I’ve been trying to do a Wine of the Month kind of thing, where I try a different bottle every month. The problem so far seems to be that I just simply forget which ones I’ve tried after a while (unless it was really really good). The other problem is that the liquor shops I have access to (i.e. by foot) caters really heavily to the college crowd. As a result everything is pretty low priced ($10-25 range).

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with cheap wines. In fact, most of the time it’s great. But they tend to make poor gifts, and it doesn’t really prepare me for what I’ll normally see in restaurants (except apparently at Olive Garden, where I’ve seen them try and sell some of these wines at twice the cost -_- ). I think to fix this, I just need to search a little further out for better stores.

In general though, I’ll probably just take a photo or scan of the label and put it up here with some kind of a rating I haven’t figured out yet. It’ll help me remember which ones I liked and which ones I didn’t.