Rigged Game

“Of course the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you — if you don’t play, you can’t win.”

— Robert Heinlein

I don’t actually like this quote, yet I’d put this quote on my Facebook profile ever since I created it. It reminds me not to walk away even how painfully to me “the game” goes. It reminds me all the games I’d lost just because I refuse to participate.

Indeed, all the games are rigged in some way, because none of the rule implied, nor explicitly stated, are true. Rule of life is never defined as clearly as RFC,  Programming Specs, or W3C recommendations, so why bother implement them.

By the way, this post has a sequel, but I’d decided to keep it to myself (Ask me in person if you really want to know, and you don’t mind me whining).

這篇文章也有續集,但是不是我又有學長姐離開了。I don’t want to write it down since I will keep myself in the mood if I do. 可能寫個英文版吧。

Just suck it up. I’ll try. And maybe I would play these games well, someday.

Tim

more things about Tim

So, CornGuo tagged me back; I will share more thing about me here (or not?):

  1. Shyness: Most people don’t know that I was born shy. I refuse to go on stage and participate team sports before I was 10. Later in my life, I spent a great deal of time to overcome the stage fright, but I never had chance to enjoy the sports thing; that was to late I guess.
  2. Private: Despite strong Internet presence, deep down I am still a private person. There are still things I don’t feel comfortable to talk about even to my closest friends; Not the that I don’t trust them or it’s something embarrassing, I just don’t feel talking about them even it’s something important to me that even I do acknowledge they should know.
  3. Math: I am not good at math, really. Math is the thing about me that echoes what Jeff had said: “The more you hate something, the more it’ll come back to you.” When I went to college, I didn’t know physics is about the ability to see through given mathematical rules that describes nature than “instincts” that I once I thought I have. Even if I switch my career to Computer Science, the theories behind is still heavily rely on mathematics. Math and algebra will save my life, even on Planet Earth it does. But do I really want to be saved?
  4. Aquarius People: I don’t believe in Astrology, yet people born under Aquarius have the ability to see me through. So please tell me ahead if you born under Aquarius before we know each other more, so I can prepare myself. What’d happened between me and Aquariusians? That’s another long long story.

Seven Things about Tim

So the “seven things” stuff finally reach this blog.  Gen Kanai tagged me,  thanks.

The Rules

  • L ink to your original tagger(s) (see above) and list these rules in your post.
  • Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
  • Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.

7 6 Facts

  1. English: For some reason, I speak a mixture of British and American accent, compare to American English most Taiwanese are taught to speak. I was corrected by teachers at school because they never get used to my A’s (e.g. cast), but my sister always say “your accent is so so American.” I do pride of my accent though, it makes me feel special.
  2. English (cont.): I constantly talk to myself in English; I’d even dreamed in English before (bilingual, to be precise). Nevertheless, my English sounds a lot better than it really is, as I cannot score high in standardized tests due to lack of ability to spell and writing compositions.
  3. Physics: The tagline of this blog, in English, is “Actually, I am someone who studies physics, not someone who build websites.(?)” Looking back, choosing physics as major was really a turning point of my life, but I couldn’t say it was a good or bad thing, for now. However, I could say to young high school kids that physics as major is demanding, and one have to love physics (or science in general) enough to devote that much time, thus being able to say “I’m a physicist” someday.
  4. Astronomy: When I was 2nd grade in high school, I was educational-chair in high school astronomy club, and gave lectures to 60+ people once a week for about an year. I am still able and available to do the same thing again, but there is no audiences anymore.
  5. Stellarium: Starting two years ago, I made a “Chinese language addon” for the F/OSS planetarium software, due to its official installer lacks of proper font and location setting. It had proved to be a quite a success, with 5000+ downloads every year and teachers across the island give out the URL of my website at class, asking students to install the software and feel the motion of the stars right on their screen (planetary and star motions are required materials in high school science and general astronomy). I am glad that my so-called expertise could make such contribution, and being able to stay in the circle of astronomy hobbyists as such role.
  6. The Internet: I’d been making websites from 1997; first set of files still sits inside a floppy of mine (should posted it on the net again and have it indexed by Wayback Machine so it will never be deleted). I own the domain timc.idv.tw since 2000 (check whois), and I paid the registration fee at a bank counter as direct deposit to TWNIC since I didn’t have a bank account to transfer money from. The Internet nowadays is like a big country with highways connecting to each cities, compare to small villages then with few people and little connections. I met some of my best friends in these small villages; we (as a group or graduates of Web 1.0) still get in touch and I cherished that.

I’ll stop here and left one thing untold, so to give a reason for people who I am going to tag an excuse not to post their seven things. Here are the people I would like to tag:

  • RitsuN, st3001, stillive, and anyone being to the Absurdity Land we once coined. These are the “graduates of Web 1.0” I am talking about.
  • Sonax2k, one of my first friends ended up going to the U.S.
  • CornGuo, who always trying to Google bomb me with Web or Javascript related links. Coming from the same high school, we did met on the Internet though.