Another slow day today. Had my second to last class here at NJU, now more chess and some thoughts on Advent of Code.

Advent of Code

For those that don’t know, Advent of Code is a yearly programming challenge in which there are challenges released every day from the 1st of December to Christmas Day (!). You are incentivized by a leaderboard to wait for the challenge to unlock and complete it as fast as possible.

I originally started because I’ve been neglecting programming since summer ended, where I spent time travelling and spent a couple odd hours in net cafes working on labyrinth-site. I’m not sure if programming is my desired career, but spending some time to put this on a resume would be worthwhile.

I completed up to day 5 with two stars on each day doing python 3. I got a bit obsessed, and since the challenges unlocked at 1pm china time, I would rush out of lunch with my friends to get home, brew some tea, and compete. Since I’m still rusty at programming it would take me an hour or two (maybe more!) to do these challenges, and it would cut into my time studying, sleeping or being with friends.

At least that’s my excuse. At day 6 I got really stumped with some off-by-one error, and being in a coffee shop with all my friends chatting and me shedding hair onto my keyboard led me to quit the challenge. At this point I felt too far behind to continue, and never did another day’s challenge. I felt previous days really helped me in certain ways, like learning how to use numpy matrices, but my time with my friends in china is limited. There’s a trope I’ve heard (even recently in episode 73 of Indie Hackers Podcast) where programmers have to cut down on social time to keep up and work on projects or businesses. I’m not sure I’m ready to do this yet.

So going forward I’ll probably work through some of these challenges when I have time at the beginning of 2019, using Michael Fogleman’s solutions as reference if I’m stuck.

Why am I Journalling?

I just talked about wasting time on my laptop, and sometimes I feel like the process of writing a blog daily is contributing to this. I already have a daily notebook system, but that’s more for personal scheduling and personal reminders.

Pros:

• Constantly improving writing ability
• Externalizing thoughts, emotions, memory, and decisions
• People could see what I work on and am interested in, so they can have interesting conversations with me
• Easy to fit in during spare time, and more productive than doing nothing.

Cons:

• Time wasted, it takes a bit to get media on here
• Hands hurt, I don’t have an ergonomic keyboard here!
• Personal information on the web, easy OSINT!

In reality, what’s going to happen is I’ll keep this updated when I’m not too busy. There’s no pressure for me to update too frequently, but while classes wrap up and since most major projects are done it’s a good way to keep busy.

China

There’s fake money being sold on my street, so it looks like there’s a lunar holiday coming up! Seems to be 冬至, the winter solstice. There’s sure to be people burning this fake stuff on the street soon. The intent is to burn items that dead relatives could use in the afterlife.

Take a look at this picture. In the past, I’ve bought some for 鬼节 and each packet of money is 1RMB. In the upper left corner of the table, you’ll see fake Zhonghua cigarettes. These sorts of ciggies are a status symbol – A friend of mine has a chinese step-dad he will go to business dinners with. When everyone pulls out cigarettes for an after-meal smoke break, if you have a brand cheaper than Zhonghua you’re seen as too poor to afford decent cigarettes! They’re also used for some small-scale bribery or to get friendly with someone, for example to get on the good terms of a security guard. So of course dead relatives will need these.

Chess

Played a game against a friend, and am working through the aforementioned Climbing the Rating Ladder. Also beginning Nimzowitsch’s My System (ISBN 9781880673850). I think the combination of playing games and then analyzing them using lichess stockfish analysis, watching videos by 2000+ rating players, and reading recommended classics should be the best strategy to get better.

Stuff I Like Today

• Martin Shkreli’s Blog: Like him or not, this guy’s a smart guy and is keeping up with things in prison. He’s inspired me to make semi-regular blog posts.
• Wikibooks Chess Opening Theory: A nice resource to learn chess openings.
• 大江戸コントローラー - Yunomi feat.TENA: As a former weeaboo, cute girl anime music has always been a guilty pleasureThis song tickles all the right parts of my brain.

Misc

The stars happened to align so I’m going out twice today – To an african resturant for dinner with a friend and immediately after to a japanese bar afterward with classmates.

Just got referenced as a “hacker” since I’m sitting in a coffee shop using a terminal to make this blog post, which reminded me of the time I saw someone else in this coffee shop with a i3+debian setup. We ended up being great friends for the rest of his time in china! That’s a reminder to you dear reader to call out people’s rice in public so you can make new tech-adjacent friends.