Personal Projects
I've several interests and pet projects that I have been keeping over the
years. Below is a list of some of the things that I am currently still
pursuing. For some of the projects, I'm happy to have
collaborators---feel free to contact me if
you'd like to work with me on something that I have in mind to work on.
I love writing, ever since I had an amazing English teacher when I was 12
years old. To keep up with my voracious need to write, I keep several blogs
for the rapid-burst style of writing that I am most used to. They are
outlined below.
-
The_Laptop Writes... is
my first blog, with an emphasis on poetry. Consisting largely of free-form
verse with a smattering of haiku, it is the de facto window to my feelings,
and I still fondly remember the nights that I have spent composing the
poems. I still update this blog now, but updates have become far and
few---it seems that the happier my life is, the fewer poems I write in
general.
-
The_Laptop Says... is
my second blog, an almost natural extension of my poetry blog. At the point
of the
first post
back in 2006, I have started to realise that my thoughts were coming so hard
and fast that the nuanced and compact form of poetry was no longer
sufficient for me to express myself. This blog became the outlet for all
forms of writing that were not poetry. But even then, this proved
insufficient, as I realised that I wanted to branch into writing stories as
opposed to pure rants. This made me fork my blog into two, with this one
used purely for rants and other interesting things.
-
The_Laptop Scribbles...
is the latest blog that I author. The focus of this is to tell stories;
every entry in this blog is either story, or a story part. Everything here
is a work of fiction, and updates are not as frequent as the previous two
due to the time and effort that is necessary to put one of those stories
together.
-
The_Laptop Wrote...
functions as an archive of the poems that I wrote back in the [now defunct]
forums from my alma mater,
Victoria Junior College. The
writing style during those early years tended to be more whimsical and had
less coherence/angst than some of the works from my dedicated poetry blog.
I decided to keep an archive of those early works to serve as a form of
comparison for the level of maturity and growth in which my writing has
experienced through the years.
In addition to the blogs, sometimes I engage in a somewhat different style
and end up putting together a semi-professional document. As and when I
have these things up, I will be posting them here. These documents are
usually in
PDF format
and are typeset using LaTeX.
In 2009, I took part in NaNoWriMo. My progress can be tracked
here. The working
title for this NaNo is ``A Slice of Life with a Twist of Lemon'' and the
first manuscript draft created from LaTeX can be downloaded
here, with the final
official word count to be 61907, not counting the table of contents and
title and chapter names. The synopsis of the story is as follows:
A slice of life view of the lives of two people, Heng Kar the
hacker-in-training and Kah Hao the musician-to-be. Add a twist of lemon,
and their lives become intertwined and their worldviews will never be the
same again.
I will probably work a little more on the manuscript after December 2009
to put it into a form that can be published, but as usual, nothing is
guaranteed here.
Here is a small sampling of some short stories that I have written and
put into PDF form using LaTeX. Most of them are first drafts---I hardly
have the time to edit them to any degree, and am usually more interested in
writing new material than revisiting old ones. If I do manage to edit them,
I will try to put both versions online just for comparison.
- P and NP (Draft): Blog
version can be found
here.
I've been playing the dizi (笛子) since 1992, and am
currently branching into playing the concert flute, the saxophone (alto,
soprano and pocket), the clarinet, and the ocarina.
My proficiencies in the instruments I play can be seen in the list below.
``Amateur grade'' means I know the fingerings of the instrument and can play
tunes on it, but have never played in an official performance with it
before. The rest of the proficiency levels used ought to be
self-descriptive.
- dizi (笛子): Lead/solo grade, since 1992.
- xiao (箫): Lead/solo grade, since 1999.
- Ocarina: Solo grade, since 2007.
- Concert Flute: Second flute grade, since 2008.
- Soprano Saxophone: Amateur grade, since 2006.
- Alto Saxophone: Amateur grade, since 2008.
- Soprano Clarinet: Amateur grade, since 2009.
- Pocket Saxophone: Amateur grade, since 2009.
- guanzi (管子): Amateur grade, since 2000.
Apart from physically playing with the musical instruments, I have also
branched out into digital music composition and remixing. Here is my
discography to date. Due to bandwidth issues, please
contact me if you are interested in downloading
some of the music---I will be glad to send you a copy over email or over
BitTorrent if there is a demand for it.
- ``Frogs in the Cave'', the final composition for the Introduction to
Computer Music class that I took in Spring 2009.
Another thing that I like doing with music is to write programs to let
the computer create its own music. One possible application to this is to
provide a useful source of decent ambient music. Since this overlaps with
computer programming, I will post my results
and code over there instead.
Typography is another pet project of mine. From a long time ago, I have
already been mesmerised by pretty type/handwriting. I've not developed the
relevant skill to creating aesthetically pleasing fonts, but I've reached
the stage where I think I can begin to appreciate the form and features of
type in general. My current goal is to design tiny fonts that are still
highly visible, for use in computer programming so as to maximise the amount
of visible source code without sacrificing readability.
Slim 8×8 Console Font
Currently, I have created a slim 8×8 console font for use in pure
consoles. This will replace the default 8×12 bitmap font and provide
the 50 lines of text that proves to be useful for a variety of tasks in the
console world.
Download the TAR+BZIP2 file here.
Art has always been something that I hope to dabble more in, but I don't
really have much time to pursue. Generally, I prefer doing pencil work, and
perhaps more abstract designs with regards to digital art creation. The
tools that I use to do most of my digital art include
the GIMP and
Inkscape, a raster image editor and
vector image editor respectively.
Personal Emblem
One of the first things that I decided to design was a personal emblem, a
simple graphic that epitomises what is essentially me. After a couple of
designs, the final one that I have settled on can be seen in the embedded
image here and in the address bar.
The graphic is deliberately pixelated, a homage to my strong computer
science origins. It features the initials to all three words of my name, in
bold capital letters, a symbolism of my demonstration that I am here in the
world and am proudly declaring my name. The glider in the lower right
corner represents my hacker heritage. The entire image is diagonally
divided with colours inverted on one side. The upper left triangle is
predominantly black while the lower right is predominantly white, a
symbolism of both the orthodox and unorthodox aspects of my character,
showing that as a person, I too am a combination of a dark and light side.
The glider is completely in the white, hinting that no matter what I do, my
ethical consideration will always be on the positive side, and never
compromising.
Last but certainly not the least, I enjoy the concept of ``hacking''.
Please do note that when I say ``hacking'', what I do mean is the playful
construction of various unlikely elements to form something that works and
is moderately interesting---basically a ``hack''. I do not break
into systems, steal passwords, deface websites and all other manners of
legally questionable activities. Most of the hacking I do are related to
computer programming, and you might find more
interesting things there than here.
Last updated on 2010 Jul 11.