So I’m generally a hardened individual who has low expectations and whose tear ducts have pretty much dried up.
So I don’t know why, but whenever I read this strip, I get a bit teary. Constantly. By far the cutest thing I’ve seen in the month of July and something that continues to touch my heart haha.
Well enough of me being emotional ^_^,
-Sebastian
So in my search for a new phone, I have but one thing to say.
Blackberry 9800.. on AT&T?! Noooooooooooooo
-Sebastian
blah. The Dow Jones closed with a 6.
An interesting fact about the homepage change I made via Firefox. It actually worked. I just found myself sitting down and writing a blog post as I opened my Firefox.
Haha. So clearly this blog post doesn’t have a huge amount of planning behind it, but it’ll recap the events of this weekend.
First and foremost, congrats to Spain for winning the entire World Cup. They deserved to win despite an ugly final game that involved 12 yellow cards.
I’m currently reading Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book which is an interesting read in that although I already know a lot of the things he’s suggested to do in the book, the book is different in that he just talks about how he plays and asks the reader the consider the idea and move on. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and realized that I’ve been pushing myself too much in one direction or another and that as a reslt I was failing inside.
What I mean by that is that in order to truly improve at something one needs to be both cerebral about it and actually apply the concepts to practice. I feel that with Poker and Magic I’ve applied different aspects of the game that have caused me to stagnate in my development.
I mean case in point is that I used to digest about 30 articles a week in Magic, but didn’t play nearly enough. Then when I did both I was a lot better. So obviously playing and reading is the highest point to truly get better. Additionally, I used to read a lot, then I started to play more poker, then stopped reading as much and I feel like I’m stagnating in that as well. If I really want to be the best, I need to read constantly and keep absorbing different things while applying those ideas into practice. If I do that I feel like I can be better and reach the peak.
Which is actually true for programming today. I feel in my programming of Ruby on Rails I haven’t had enough of the literature absorbed (my favorite word for this blog post obviously) to be truly proficient at the language to code for anything really. I’m currently trying to change that, but it’s definitely a hard task when I’m trying to also do my job to the optimum. And that’s really all I want to do.
Well that last statement is false (I want to do much more than that.)
With that note,
-Sebastian
So finally I found the right moment to upload my computer specs!
Desktop:
Peripherals:
^_^
-Sebastian
So I guess I’ll start out by saying I’m a huge fan of RSS feeds. I’ve used them for god knows how long and I find them to be the 3rd thing I check every morning (right behind my e-mail, which I check on my cellphone as I wake up and the whole gmail/facebook combination which includes the calendar).
Anyway, I really like having no items left in my list, but after slacking off during the school year and allowing it to balloon to 1000s of items, I’ve definitely tried to keep it under wraps this time around.
However, it’s harder than I thought it would be.
Currently I RSS feed the following:
And I stay up to date with all of these, however, CNET Tech and Engadget just inundate me with news story after news story and it’s hard to keep up with both.
I probably need to ditch one or both. Wonder if anyone has any suggestions.. Let me know!
-Sebastian
Just a brief forward in regards to Landon Donovan for making my fellow Americans care about Football Soccer for a second. His 91st minute goal is pretty much the equivalent of a Kobe Game winner in soccer terms, and I suppose the fact it was the last game of the group is about as equivalent to a game 7 in the 1st round of the NBA playoffs. And with that, the two teams I’m rooting for, South Korea and the United States, both made the round of 16.
Also once again, Twitter is down. I said this a long time ago, but I don’t believe Twitter is built to handle loads. And apparently throwing venture capital money at it isn’t going to fix it.
-Sebastian
A couple of things I wanted to update since I figured I’d update to WordPress 3.0 today.
First and foremost, there’s not that much different in the front end of WordPress. I’ve heard however the user experience (Both the base and admin user) is much more crisp and what not. Personally, staring at this for 2 minutes, I haven’t noticed a huge difference.
Second, Korea advanced to the round of 16 for the second time in that country’s history and first time abroad. Honestly, this was mostly done by Park Ji-Sung and Park Chu-Young as to be frank, the goalie and Kim Nam-il both seemed god awful. Kim Nam-il for example game into the game, took an ill-advised strike from 45 meters out, despite probably having less leg strength than my grandfather (not that big of an insult, my grandfather is an extremely athletic man nearing his 80s… Ok maybe a bit of an insult). The Goalie seemed to jump at the ball too quickly, a sign of immaturity from what I’ve been told by AJ (I didn’t know a darn thing about football/soccer 2 months ago. Luckily, AJ (AKA AJ_Impy from the podcast) is a legit brit who explained everything to me). Also the guy defending the left flank seemed to be a step or two slower than most of the players he’s faced. Unfortunate.
That said, Park Ji-Sung shows why he plays for Man U and Park Chu Young seems to be the next exceptionally good Korean to emerge from these events to enter the Premier League.
Lastly, in addition to getting internet at my sublet (FINALLY), I came to a revelation as to why my Magic performance, save a still mediocre day 2 finish at GP DC, has been awful. The conclusion I came to was that I was no longer playing enough magic to be switching between decks nilly-willy as I have been these past few tournaments (Since Nat Quals, I’ve played Jund, Red, Mythic, and Next Level Bant. Of which I only did well with Red, a deck I played thoroughly back in the day). So I’ve decided to stick with one deck the remainder of the season and hope for the best. The deck I chose was Mythic since it seems to be an extremely powerful deck with the ability to make itself interactive with opponents. A good choice I think.
Anyway, I’m wrapping up here and moving on. My desktop is built and my internet up so I’ll give specs on both sometime in the future (I hope..)
-Sebastian
Since I was a little kid, I’ve heard a bunch of sayings and things that I’ve lived by.
They were told to me mostly by my father, but also by my mother, grandparents, and other relatives. As I grew older, I realized that not all of these sayings originated from these family members, but rather from important people throughout history.
One of these great men passed away last week. Coach Wooden’s sayings are definitely part of my mentality and part of how I approach things in everyday life. A lot of my obsession for preparation comes from sayings such as “practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.” (You’ll see me practicing this a lot when it comes to exercise, Magic, and studying) .
ESPN recently ran a short piece with a combination of Woodenisms. I felt it be fit to share them on this blog as well.
“Be prepared and be honest.”
“Be quick, but don’t hurry.”
“You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.”
“You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”
“What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player.”
“Winning takes talent; to repeat takes character.”
“A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.”
“I’d rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.”
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
“If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.”
“It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.”
“Ability is a poor man’s wealth.”
“Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”
“Consider the rights of others before your own feelings and the feelings of others before your own rights.”
“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
“Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.”
“It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.”
“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
“Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”
“The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.”
“Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
“Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
Source: CoachWooden.com
I realize of course that Coach Wooden didn’t come up with all of these. That said, we must credit him with spreading these to everyone in this modern era.
-Sebastian
So in an attempt to prompt myself to blog more often, I’ve moved onto making Firefox’s (one of the two browsers I use) default page as the add post page.
Hopefully this will tempt me into writing more frequently in this blog.
In other news, I just moved into the Sublet last night. Lots of thanks to Julian for helping me out and Amir for helping out as well.
I’m in a sublet now? Seriously I’m behind on talking. And like most things, when you get behind, you stop wanting to do it.
Anyway, I need to setup this ruby environment on Mint so I’m booting out for now.
-Sebastian