I happen to have a kid, a fourth grader as of this writer, who like most kids his age are so into computer games. This, he does daily to the detriment of his school work. He'd rather click away on a desktop than do his homework.
Of course, no father would want such a condition to go on unchecked. My immediate reaction was to find some way to integrate computer games and schoolwork together. I found one such solution which I blogged about (Math Blaster) in my other blog. Check it out to know more.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
What is Brainwave Entrainment?
What is Brainwave Entrainment? Well, at least from the readings that I've done lately, it has something to do with our brainwave frequencies tending to follow a current dominant frequency. From this brainwave entrainment website, a process called frequency following response is something our brain normally do when it is exposed to sounds, sights, or kinesthetics, that are repetitive and regular and with considerable duration.
Actually, I have also dabbled in this a few years back. I used to be a member of a yahoo group called bwgen. I dropped off the group after it was hopelessly infested with spammers. I used a shareware called bwgen which is a software that can generate binaural tones that are then used for brainwave entrainment. In fact, in the bwgen site's library, I have submitted a preset called 'deep bubble 1' (an improved version of my first submission 'deep bubble'). Well, I've had nice experiences in brainwave entrainment using that preset before my interest in brainwave thingies faded out after sometime. Now, I guess I have a mind to go back to it and tinker with it again. It's a helper tool after all to meditation.
I'll post sometime soon more on this topic particularly on isochronic beats and its benefits.
Actually, I have also dabbled in this a few years back. I used to be a member of a yahoo group called bwgen. I dropped off the group after it was hopelessly infested with spammers. I used a shareware called bwgen which is a software that can generate binaural tones that are then used for brainwave entrainment. In fact, in the bwgen site's library, I have submitted a preset called 'deep bubble 1' (an improved version of my first submission 'deep bubble'). Well, I've had nice experiences in brainwave entrainment using that preset before my interest in brainwave thingies faded out after sometime. Now, I guess I have a mind to go back to it and tinker with it again. It's a helper tool after all to meditation.
I'll post sometime soon more on this topic particularly on isochronic beats and its benefits.
Monday, December 8, 2008
The Santa Claus Hoax
Yes, we’ve had this discussion before. Is it right to continue playing the Santa Claus hoax to our kids? Should we let them through all this only to find later in life that it was all a lie?
Some parents have altogether thrown away their Santa uniforms vowing never to teach an untruth to their kids. The fantasy of some jolly fat dressed-all-in-red man with a funny looking cap on his head, sliding thru the chimney and leaving gifts to the worthy kids – some parents have deemed this unworthy to live on. It is a lie as big and fat as the subject. And so, during the Christmas season, they make sure any image of Santa Claus is excluded from the whole set. And as soon as the young ones start asking questions about Santa - because they heard the other kids excitedly talking about the gifts they receive from Santa, telling about seeing all-red Santa tiptoeing out of their house in the middle of the night, or perhaps wondering why some giant elf-looking man is dancing around in the mall – the parents tell them the ‘facts’. That Santa Claus is a make-believe character created by our great, great grandparents for their children. That Santa never really existed. That the Santa that other kids are telling you about is really their own dads masquerading as Santa!
Every time this topic arises, I always find myself sticking it out with the side I believe is right. I say, yes, let the fantasy live on.
When I was a kid, living in some rural nowhere, Christmas always invoked the thought of gifts from Santa Claus. My parents playfully and secretly place the gifts on our sacks as soon as we children fall asleep. And when we wake up and find these gifts and excitedly rush to their beds announcing our treasures, they would put on their perfectly planned and timed surprised expressions and asked us what we got and who gave them to us.
This fantasy played on unbroken until after the 6th grade. I’ve always been fond of reading. Every now and then, I read of some stories about the Santa thing. Some stories tell of the Santa hoax. But this was always overwhelmingly overridden by the children’s book stories of the ‘real’ jolly Santa from the North Pole that I re-read every so often. Sometime after the 6th grade however, I read about the ‘hoax’ thing again, and then got feedback from some of my friends. My dad, on being confronted about it, paused and looked at me, looked at mom, and said: “The kid’s grown up now, mom.” And he proceeded to tell me the truth. But he warned me not to tell my other younger brother and sisters about it. We, grown ups, should keep this a secret, he said. If emotions could be heard, I would probably have heard the sound of things crumbling and shattering, as I was then feeling like some little inner world collapsing as its supports were suddenly ripped away. Knowing that Christmas will never be the same again, I felt like I lost a very, very dear friend. It took a few silent moments to settle down. Then I began to feel better again as I looked at my dad. So, he is our Santa Claus! My very, very dear friend is still with me after all. But, like I said, some of the magic of Christmas was lost. The side that was secret and funnily mysterious was gone.
So, am I going to let my kids, now that I’m a dad, suffer the same fate I had? Absolutely!!! Remembering the Christmases I had during my childhood years always makes me feel warm and fuzzy, Santa being one of the central figures in it. And I can’t help but thank my dad and mom for letting me believe a lie for a few years in my life. And I am not about to deny this much excitement and magic for my kids.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
End of the month journal
I didn't know web application programming is this fun! After a superficial brush with ASP.net, I plunge into PHP-MySQL- Apache-Javascript-Ajax. Two days ago, the boss and I realized that we could not make the kind of chat and whiteboard application that we had in mind using PHP alone. The kind we wanted needs to be programmed using Flash! So, I have to drop the pathetic beginnings of a chat program (with codes I have salvaged from a lot of sources) because he instructed just 2 days ago to just clone up the webpages of a model site he liked for our website (that will host the chat program). He is, right now, looking for programmers who know flash, php and mysql to build the chat-whiteboard application.
So, these past couple of days had me researching, coding, and photoshopping up images for the website. I don't know, but I feel I am really enjoying this. Maybe, it's the doing-something-new effect; probably, it's because of the warming up of my right brain hemisphere due to the aesthetics of the "art work" that I do every now and then; or, probably it's because I just had my birthday a couple of weeks ago, followed by my wife's birthday a week after that, and then my mother's birthday just 3 days ago. And I also solved my very first complete Rubic's cube; thanks to some guy's youtube instructional video.
The thing about cloning a website, or anything for that matter, is that you get to show off your skills and your finesse at doing things exactly as expected. The downside is that, even when you see that something could be done better, you'll have to forego implementing your creative ideas, because that is not what is expected. In two days, beginner as I am, I have only created the home page and just beginning the second page. All the links are still to be worked on. The boss had implied that he expects something substantial on Saturday, and that's just 3 days from now. Oh, how I hate thin deadlines. Judging by the rate I am going now, I need six days just to do the major pages. Ugh! That's why I either have to become a boss myself, or at least become really good at this programming thing fast. Or, I could go ahead and pursue a friend's idea of looking for some income earning job that's more home-based. Less stressful, he said. I might just look into that one of these days.
So far, this is all that's notable enough to write this week about my world (pretty boring world, eh?). Yeah, sort of boring, indeed. But as soon as I earn my first million dollars, things are going to change drastically, rest assured. Bye for now.
So, these past couple of days had me researching, coding, and photoshopping up images for the website. I don't know, but I feel I am really enjoying this. Maybe, it's the doing-something-new effect; probably, it's because of the warming up of my right brain hemisphere due to the aesthetics of the "art work" that I do every now and then; or, probably it's because I just had my birthday a couple of weeks ago, followed by my wife's birthday a week after that, and then my mother's birthday just 3 days ago. And I also solved my very first complete Rubic's cube; thanks to some guy's youtube instructional video.
The thing about cloning a website, or anything for that matter, is that you get to show off your skills and your finesse at doing things exactly as expected. The downside is that, even when you see that something could be done better, you'll have to forego implementing your creative ideas, because that is not what is expected. In two days, beginner as I am, I have only created the home page and just beginning the second page. All the links are still to be worked on. The boss had implied that he expects something substantial on Saturday, and that's just 3 days from now. Oh, how I hate thin deadlines. Judging by the rate I am going now, I need six days just to do the major pages. Ugh! That's why I either have to become a boss myself, or at least become really good at this programming thing fast. Or, I could go ahead and pursue a friend's idea of looking for some income earning job that's more home-based. Less stressful, he said. I might just look into that one of these days.
So far, this is all that's notable enough to write this week about my world (pretty boring world, eh?). Yeah, sort of boring, indeed. But as soon as I earn my first million dollars, things are going to change drastically, rest assured. Bye for now.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
A brush with ASP.net
A couple of weeks back, the boss came over to announce that he's scrapping the project I was currently working on because he thought it was not very commercially viable. In its stead, he explained to me the new project he thought would be more feasible. It's got to do with online tutoring. So that means it would involve some online chatting application, and some graphics manipulation to go with it. Probably, later on, it would introduce voice chat too.
The biggest issue here of course is that I need to learn a new language and fast. And that would be ASP.net. We'll, I've really been meaning to study it for quite some time, but I just didn't have the time beyond worrying over the current application project.
So, I grabbed one of 5 books in the shelf nearest me, "Instant ASP.net". After a quick pass over the book, I realized that the book is not as helpful as I expected it to be. So, to the net I splashed and googled for everything under the sun that's got ASP.net on its tag label. The problem here is that I don't have the luxury of starting from the very beginning and working myself up the ladder before plunging into a project. The boss says, I gotta launch a test chatroom in two weeks time more or less, saying that ASP.net is actually very easy a high school freshman can learn it in a week.
Long story short, I was able to publish over IIS a test chat page after 2 weeks. Elated at the success of my first ASP.net 'Hello World'-like page, I began to enjoy learning ASP.net. Then, the boss messaged me just this morning telling me to use PHP and MySQL instead. After learning 0.01% of ASP.net, I have to teach myself PHP and MySQL! Fast! God, I am introducing myself to a lot of languages. I hope I get to master at least one of them.
The biggest issue here of course is that I need to learn a new language and fast. And that would be ASP.net. We'll, I've really been meaning to study it for quite some time, but I just didn't have the time beyond worrying over the current application project.
So, I grabbed one of 5 books in the shelf nearest me, "Instant ASP.net". After a quick pass over the book, I realized that the book is not as helpful as I expected it to be. So, to the net I splashed and googled for everything under the sun that's got ASP.net on its tag label. The problem here is that I don't have the luxury of starting from the very beginning and working myself up the ladder before plunging into a project. The boss says, I gotta launch a test chatroom in two weeks time more or less, saying that ASP.net is actually very easy a high school freshman can learn it in a week.
Long story short, I was able to publish over IIS a test chat page after 2 weeks. Elated at the success of my first ASP.net 'Hello World'-like page, I began to enjoy learning ASP.net. Then, the boss messaged me just this morning telling me to use PHP and MySQL instead. After learning 0.01% of ASP.net, I have to teach myself PHP and MySQL! Fast! God, I am introducing myself to a lot of languages. I hope I get to master at least one of them.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Warm October Welcome
The first of October came with a smile on its face. I woke up feeling good. I'm not sure about the reason. A good dream probably, which most of the time I can't recall. Or perhaps I just woke up, as they say, on the right side of the bed.
Whatever the reason, I am certain to enjoy the day. The sun was just lovely as I ventured outside the door. I sat outside basking in the sunlight. I even called out to my wife, who was still in bed, to come over and sun bath. She did.
What's more...it was a holiday! Well, at least for her...a government employee holiday...something to do with a Muslim holiday. My office doesn't care about holidays. But the boss doesn't complain if you do take it though. The thing is, we don't have to rush. Usually, we would have awakened with a jolt from the alarm clock at 4:30 a.m. and dragged ourselves to the bathroom with brains still half asleep. Now, we could leisurely greet the sun, Good morning!
The day before, the wireless network at the office sort of broke down after I did some port forwarding with the router and I went home late without being able to fix it. I remember hoping that probably after a night's rest, the router would resume with its normal functions.
Well, I came to the office and with optimistic anticipation turned on the computer. The network was still down. But my day is not about to be taken down by some misbehaving R2D2. The idea of using the cables direct from the router, (instead of using wireless) popped into my mind. And so with a little crawling under and climbing over tables and a pair of dusty hands later, I was online and connected to the server. I was alone as usual in the office, so...what the heck. I jumped and danced my happy dance to celebrate my victory over digital matter. This, by the way, is also another first for me. A few years back, I never touch those things. Modems, routers, whatever. I leave them to the tech guys at the IT department. Now, I do most things myself. I'm learning a lot!
It is still morning as I wrote this. It can't wait of course. After a really warm and beautiful start, the bright day awaits with many pleasant surprises for me ahead. What can I say, but... Thank you, Lord of the Universe!
Whatever the reason, I am certain to enjoy the day. The sun was just lovely as I ventured outside the door. I sat outside basking in the sunlight. I even called out to my wife, who was still in bed, to come over and sun bath. She did.
What's more...it was a holiday! Well, at least for her...a government employee holiday...something to do with a Muslim holiday. My office doesn't care about holidays. But the boss doesn't complain if you do take it though. The thing is, we don't have to rush. Usually, we would have awakened with a jolt from the alarm clock at 4:30 a.m. and dragged ourselves to the bathroom with brains still half asleep. Now, we could leisurely greet the sun, Good morning!
The day before, the wireless network at the office sort of broke down after I did some port forwarding with the router and I went home late without being able to fix it. I remember hoping that probably after a night's rest, the router would resume with its normal functions.
Well, I came to the office and with optimistic anticipation turned on the computer. The network was still down. But my day is not about to be taken down by some misbehaving R2D2. The idea of using the cables direct from the router, (instead of using wireless) popped into my mind. And so with a little crawling under and climbing over tables and a pair of dusty hands later, I was online and connected to the server. I was alone as usual in the office, so...what the heck. I jumped and danced my happy dance to celebrate my victory over digital matter. This, by the way, is also another first for me. A few years back, I never touch those things. Modems, routers, whatever. I leave them to the tech guys at the IT department. Now, I do most things myself. I'm learning a lot!
It is still morning as I wrote this. It can't wait of course. After a really warm and beautiful start, the bright day awaits with many pleasant surprises for me ahead. What can I say, but... Thank you, Lord of the Universe!
Thursday, September 25, 2008
POST STRESS THOUGHTS
After weeks of wrestling with code debugging, I am finally making some progress in tracing and editing the culprit code lines. Just a few moments ago, I gave a triumphant yelp as the program pushed through; then, a couple of seconds later, a groan, as another bug floated up and showed its ugly face. Am I seeing another week of 'brain-fatigue-ing' exercise?
Well, I decided to rest my brain a bit. I needed it. Experience has finally convinced me that stress does take its toll on our bodies. I used to just shrug away my parents' and friends' and now my wife's comments about stress and its effects. Not that I am not aware of it, but I frown at the thought of something you enjoy doing giving you stress. Swimming at the beach is enjoyable. Is it going to stress me out? Now, clicking away in front of the computer all day and far into the night, coding, solving code bug problems, is something I enjoy doing as much as swimming. Perhaps I was really stupid but yes, I laughed at the stress-advisers and I shouted back at them: How can something that makes me feel good give me stress!?
After a few weeks of low-energy and respiratory troubles later, I found myself singing a different tune. Yeah, they did not literally say it, but I could almost hear them say 'I told you so.' Well, that's me. Most of the time, I have to learn the hard way to convince myself that what I am doing may not be right.
They say meditation is an excellent stress buster. I am interested in meditation and its related fields. Thing is, I find that I don't have the discipline to stick through the routine. I am the kind of yoga pupil who needs a guru who takes his pupils by the collar and pushes them roughly on the floor and keeps them there until they stop moving and holding in his other hand a whip ready to lash out at anyone who dares to even blink. Ok, ok, maybe a gentler one.
The method I am implementing right now is sleeping early. Whereas, I used to stay up in front of my computer until way past midnight, I now make sure I hit the sack by 10 o’clock in the evening. This, by the way, is a necessity as I have to wake up at 4:30 in the morning to get ready to bring my son to school. Grade 3 students’ classes start at 6:00 o’clock in the morning.
Stress. I’d probably discover some method that’d be most beneficial for me in the long run. With the need to earn money for my family, and to keep up with my need to learn (I am interested in a lot of things) and do new things, I am still not putting health matters at the top of my priority list, but I do keep an eye on stress now as I run along.
Today is September 25, 2008. I think blogging is interesting, even if it only serves to just have some of my thoughts recorded digitally and always a click away when I need to reminisce back at them.
Well, I decided to rest my brain a bit. I needed it. Experience has finally convinced me that stress does take its toll on our bodies. I used to just shrug away my parents' and friends' and now my wife's comments about stress and its effects. Not that I am not aware of it, but I frown at the thought of something you enjoy doing giving you stress. Swimming at the beach is enjoyable. Is it going to stress me out? Now, clicking away in front of the computer all day and far into the night, coding, solving code bug problems, is something I enjoy doing as much as swimming. Perhaps I was really stupid but yes, I laughed at the stress-advisers and I shouted back at them: How can something that makes me feel good give me stress!?
After a few weeks of low-energy and respiratory troubles later, I found myself singing a different tune. Yeah, they did not literally say it, but I could almost hear them say 'I told you so.' Well, that's me. Most of the time, I have to learn the hard way to convince myself that what I am doing may not be right.
They say meditation is an excellent stress buster. I am interested in meditation and its related fields. Thing is, I find that I don't have the discipline to stick through the routine. I am the kind of yoga pupil who needs a guru who takes his pupils by the collar and pushes them roughly on the floor and keeps them there until they stop moving and holding in his other hand a whip ready to lash out at anyone who dares to even blink. Ok, ok, maybe a gentler one.
The method I am implementing right now is sleeping early. Whereas, I used to stay up in front of my computer until way past midnight, I now make sure I hit the sack by 10 o’clock in the evening. This, by the way, is a necessity as I have to wake up at 4:30 in the morning to get ready to bring my son to school. Grade 3 students’ classes start at 6:00 o’clock in the morning.
Stress. I’d probably discover some method that’d be most beneficial for me in the long run. With the need to earn money for my family, and to keep up with my need to learn (I am interested in a lot of things) and do new things, I am still not putting health matters at the top of my priority list, but I do keep an eye on stress now as I run along.
Today is September 25, 2008. I think blogging is interesting, even if it only serves to just have some of my thoughts recorded digitally and always a click away when I need to reminisce back at them.
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