Learning to say no

Posted on January 11, 2012 by liyong

It turns out that it’s not easy to sleep at 11 every night. It means that I need to be home by 9.30pm at the latest so that I have time to shower and do various things before bedtime.

However, embarking on this habit tells me that I have a very serious sleep debt. In the first week, I have been quite successful at this except for one day where I reached home at 11 after badminton.

Unfortunately, this means I have to learn to say no to things that will break my sleep cycle.  In just 1 short week, I found myself rejecting 2 invitations to events because they end too late. Going forward, I will assess each event on its own merit before deciding whether to sacrifice my sleep for it. I suppose this will allow me to only go for things that I really want to go.

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Looking back on 2011 (and forward to 2012)

Posted on December 31, 2011 by liyong

Since today is New Year’s eve, I thought it would be a good idea to look back on the year that passed and think about how it has impacted me.

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Trial: New tasks organization

Posted on December 22, 2011 by liyong

I have been using Google Tasks to help me with my to-do list for a very long time. It seems natural to do so since I am using Gmail and Google Calendar frequently.

Oddly enough, Google doesn’t have an app for it in the Android App market. I am using GTasks to manage my to-do list on my phone.

Previously, I would just put down my entire list on the default list. This is fine, but isn’t really helpful in deciding what is the next thing to do.

Since Google Tasks support multiple lists, I am currently experimenting with creating a list for each location. Then I place my item on the list where I can complete the item.

Currently, I have Home, Office, School, Telephone, Internet lists. I think that this is a much better way to organize my tasks since I can just open the relevant list when I am at a particular location in order to complete the tasks there.

I have only been using such a method for the past 2 weeks. Will give it a while more to see if it’s worth the hassle of maintaining so many lists.

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2011 Hao-lian post

Posted on December 19, 2011 by liyong

It’s Christmas season and I decided to give myself some tech presents.

Read on to find out more!

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Stop treating us like thieves!

Posted on November 16, 2011 by liyong

Unlike some other people, I am usually quite happy to pay for creative contents. Being a software person, I appreciate that people takes time to develop content and should be rewarded economically for it.

I am actually quite excited by the onset of digital contents like music and ebooks because they take up negligible space. My room is already packed to the max and cannot take any more books or albums or CDs.

Recently, I have been trying to purchase an ebook for something I thought was quite interesting. The problem is that I felt that I am being punished for trying to do the right thing.

Let me explain. I could have quite easily went to some torrent website and find the book. But I felt that it was worthwhile to pay for the book. However all sites I found was selling the book in some sort of DRM format. That sucks because 1) it usually ties you to some platform or device (see Amazon) and 2) I don’t actually own the bloody thing.

It seems that all that things like DRM do is to punish people who wants to honestly pay for their content. Especially since I do not have a mass-market device like the Kindle, I would rather have the flexibility to have a DRM-free file that is free to do whatever I want with it.

If I end up with more restrictions by actually paying for the damned ebook, there is no way I would do it.

If you want me to do the right thing, stop treating me like a thief.

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