Category: Life

Ctrl, Alt, Delight: I’ve Ordered Another Keyboard!

So this happened last night…

I had been drooling over this so many years ago (like back in 2015) but just gave up because it was way over my budget for a keyboard in the first place, and the horrendous shipping and import fees would only make it even worse.

I eventually forgot about it, and fast forward 7 or 8 years, here I am, playing around on the computer while watching a Lex Fridman video from some time back, and this showed up! I went and checked it out on Amazon again, and guess what? It was available! (it still comes at a cost, as is the case with all the pretty things in life…. but at least it’s available!!)

I went back on YouTube in search of some reviews on the device but came across this other short video that pretty much sealed the deal for me.

For those of you too lazy to watch the YouTube clip, it’s from a discussion Lex had with none other than Guido van Rossum, where he explains how much he likes this keyboard.

So I did the only sensible thing one could do and went ahead and ordered it.

And now we wait, I’ll post a photo here when this arrives.

Until we meet again… keep calm and type on! =)

~SeeJay


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Edit: It arrived! 😍

Gotabaya – Return of the Jedi

Update: This guy shat the bed. :-/

If you’ve seen me on Facebook, you’d know how I am bombarding my friends with posts on the upcoming presidential election in Sri Lanka.

If you haven’t decided to vote Gotabaya yet, you probably will once you read the following piece published back in 2010 in The Manila Times print edition. Be sure to watch the video of the BBC interview once you finish the article.

Also Did you know that Gotabaya used to be a Unix/Solaris Administrator back in the U.S.? How amazing is that? =) Ok, enough listening to me. Go on read The Manila Times article and be sure to vote early in the morning on 16th of November. ~SeeJay

Continue reading “Gotabaya – Return of the Jedi” →

Me, My Team and The Gran Hotel Elba Estepona

Yes, you read it right! After almost 3 years of working together totally remote, I finally got to meet my awesome colleagues at Scrapinghub back in November 2017 when we had our first ever company get together in Estepona, Spain.

Estepona Sunrises are to die for.

So my flight was around 10:30 pm and I was driven to the airport by my little sister two hours before. She has staff access there and knows everybody so I got the total VIP treatment and the whole process was super comfortable for me.
(Of course It did help that I had all the documents in proper order, as airport security is no joke, no matter how important of a person you are :D)

City of stars forever!

I was just about to step outside of the window for some fresh air when I saw the warning sign =)

I was driven from Malaga airport to Estepona by this wonderful gentleman with a BMW… BMW’s are somewhat of an elite vehicle in Sri Lanka and I had not been in one until this so I was pretty thrilled to have that experience.
It was a comfortable drive; took about 45 minutes to the hotel.

Finally we came to Elba Estepona! It looked just as magnificent as I imagined!

Main entrance was this really cool rotating door which kept the inside of the hotel away from the cold air outside.

To be continued…

As I came out of the hotel, my ride to the airport arrived and the chauffeur put all my luggage into the back of the vehicle. I turned around and took one last look at the magnificent main entrance of the Gran Hotel Elba Estepona, where I had both the most wonderful time with awesome people and also indulged in the luxuries of solitude and quiet with a view that is absolutely out of this world, and whispered to myself “Until next time!”

And then I jumped into the vehicle that was going to take me back to the airport, This time, another Sri Lankas’s favorite, a Mercedes…

about:sleep (or lack thereof)

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I’m kinda embarrassed to admit this, but this is the best time I’ve managed to track so far.

One of the most useful things for me with the Xiaomi Mi Band is the sleep tracker. I check my sleep data pretty much every morning, and it helps me figure out if I got enough rest the night before and what to do if when I haven’t.

I’ve known for a long time that I usually don’t get enough sleep at night, and I’m not exactly proud of it. I find it way easier to focus at night because it’s so peaceful and calm. While some of you “early to bed, early to rise” folks might not get this, I’m sure the night owls out there totally do.

But whatever your sleep style is, we can all agree on one thing: not getting enough sleep comes with some serious health risks. Seriously, Google it right now! You’ll find tons of research showing how bad sleep deprivation can be. I was gonna link some articles I’ve read about this before, but googling them flooded me with a bunch more. I skimmed a couple, and it freaked me out so much that instead of finishing this post last night around midnight, I went straight to bed!

Anyway, I’ve been tracking my sleep for a few weeks now, and I know I need to step it up. Don’t get me wrong, I always knew I wasn’t getting enough sleep, I just didn’t have the hard numbers… or maybe I was too lazy to actually track it. That’s why the Mi Band’s so helpful, it does all the work for me. Now I know I usually get between 3 to 5 hours a night, around 3 if I stay up too late, and just over 5 if I hit the sack a bit “early.”

Now that I’ve got a clear picture of how much sleep I’m getting and what I need to fix, it’s one less thing to stress about. And honestly, if you saw my numbers, you’d see I don’t have that much to tweak. Since I work from home all the time, I can sleep whenever I want and wake up whenever I feel like it. Some of you who have to get up early to commute might think it’s tougher for you to fix your sleep, trust me, it’s not! I’d argue it’s actually harder for me ‘cause I don’t have that nudge to stick to a set schedule. I end up staying up too late and, for some weird reason, waking up earlier than I should.

My point? Whether you can pick your wake-up time or not, there’s almost always a way to carve out enough sleep (and if there isn’t, you need to rethink what you’re doing, because you’re probably better off alive). I’ve been slacking on this for way too long, but I’m set on changing that now.

So how do we pull this off? Easy! track your daily sleep habits and adjust accordingly. Sort out your schedule ‘til you’re getting at least 6 hours (maybe 7, depending on how you feel). I totally recommend grabbing a sleep tracker. Because it’s been a game-changer for me. I tried some Android apps a while back, but they didn’t cut it. I don’t like keeping my phone that close to me in bed, and I’m not even sure how accurate they are. So, get a real sleep tracker (I mean, $20+ for a shot at better health is a steal =) ).

Once you know how much sleep you’re getting (or how little, if you’re like me), figure out how much more you need for a healthy amount and set up a schedule.

And most importantly, stick to that sleep schedule like your life depends on it. ‘cause it probably does!

~SeeJay

Make blogging great again!

So yeah, I’m tired of not having a proper place to post my rants. And I certainly don’t think I’m accomplishing anything by posting stuff on Facebook (Twitter, I’m still in love with, but there’s only so much you can do with 140 characters).

So a few months back I decided to blame Blogger for my laziness and switched to something better. I went with Pelican because it was written in Python and also it was really good. But after a few weeks, I realized that having all those moving parts (Static site generators, how ironic!) really gets in the way and you end up managing the site rather than posting anything. And I decided that I needed to get back to the one true blog platform!

And today I’m rocking a super cool WordPress installation on my blog. I imported all the content from the old Blogger site and fixed the URL structure. I’ll be hunting for a good theme in the next few days and hopefully keep this blog up to date again, just like the old days.

~SeeJay

Don’t mess with my Internet!

sobrave The coolest thing about the internet? It’s ours! all of us, No matter who you are or where you’re from, we’ve all got the freedom to steer it where we want. But now, the U.S. Congress is messing with that, pushing laws that could wreck the internet’s core setup. Tech giants like Wikipedia, Mozilla, Reddit, Google, and tons more who actually give a damn about protecting the internet are fighting back. But of course, there’s a pack of greedy politicians gunning for these laws, all to prop up a few groups who’d rather trash the internet than fix their outdated business models. That’s straight-up evil, and we’ve got to hit back hard! That’s why everyone who cares about keeping the internet free needs to spread the word and get people clued in to fight the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). If either of these passes, it’s game over for the internet as we know it. Don’t let anyone screw with your internet! Jump into the fight against SOPA/PIPA. Read more at: SOPA Strike SOPA FAQ Tim O’Reilly interview What Experts think InfoGraphic (Picture courtesy of reddit)

The Reader

Wow! It’s been ages since I last typed anything here… 🙂 This is hands-down a record gap, and nah, I’m not gonna ramble about how Twitter killed blogging for me or whatever. Truth is, I haven’t even tweeted that much, just a bit here and there, definitely not enough for anyone to call me a Twitter junkie. A couple of days ago, I actually tweaked my Twitter bio from “microBlogging addict” to “Information addict” 🙂 Yep, an info addict? you might ask… That’s totally me.

I finally figured out what I spend most of my time doing… I read! :-S I read like crazy, pretty much all the time. I even eat dinner in front of my laptop, flipping through an ebook or scrolling HN, Reddit, Slashdot, or some random nerdy site with cool stuff you’ve probably never stumbled across.

So yeah, that’s my thing… I read, and I know things! 😉

~SeeJay