Tag: bloganuary

Responding to the Bloganuary January 9 prompt:

This is deep.

I feel like I am still learning and finding mine in my life.

Or perhaps I shouldn’t look at my life-long mission now, since I haven’t really figured out one.

A short-term mission.

To get more people (especially in Malaysia) to know more about Automattic and its remote distributed work culture.

Because I find many people and companies have doubts and do not subscribe to this idea. I think it is a shame or a waste, and I would like to do my part to change it, even if it’s just a little.

That’s one of the reasons why I enjoy attending WordPress meetups and WordCamps. And doing presentations and talks about our P2.

That’s one of the reasons why I setup this blog.

Perhaps this short-term mission might eventually end up being my life-long mission.

Responding to the Bloganuary January 8 prompt:

It depends.

If everyone can live for a very long life (say 100 years old at the minimum), but every other factors remain the same, then I feel like the quality of life may become bad or terrible.

There would be more and more people, on a crowded and limited space we call Earth. Resources will become lesser.

Unless we are not confined to just Earth. If we are able to travel to and live in other planets, then that may not sound like a bad idea after all.

But in the end, what is the purpose of life?

If we do not have a purpose in our lives, then what is the meaning of living a very long life? What difference does it make?

Would it be boring? Would it even be a torture?

Unless we never stop learning. To make long lives purposeful and meaningful.

That’s the meaning of life.

My response to the Bloganuary January 7 prompt:

One thing I mentioned in my previous post is that I wish I can hold on less to perfectionism.

Nothing is perfect.

Shipping imperfect code is better than perfect code that never get shipped.

A published post is better than a perfect post that never get published.

Don’t overthink things.

Just ship, learn, and repeat.

Here’s my response to the Bloganuary January 6 post:

I think of many quotes that could go into the billboard.

If you had one shot or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?

Eminem’s Lose Yourself song.

Though it’s probably a bit too cheesy to put a song lyric like this into a billboard.

I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul.

Invictus.

I first learned this from the movie Invictus. Great movie.

见自己 见天地 见众生

(Direct translation: “See yourself; see the heaven and earth; see all living beings.”)

From 一代宗师 The Grandmaster movie.

Learn and understand one self. Learn from everything and everyone in the world. And give back what you learn to the world.

Leave it better than you found it.

Sir Robert Baden-Powell.

A phrase that is mentioned quite regularly within Automattic. The idea is that if we find something that is not ideal – whether it is documentation, blog post, code, physical environment etc – we should make it better than how it was. Edit the documentation. Refactor the code. Pick up the trash. Make it better for the person after us, which might eventually come back to us.

Maybe even The Automattic Creed. But that’s probably too long to fit into a freeway billboard.

And no, I don’t need to promote my own blog on the billboard.

This is a response to the Bloganuary January 5 prompt:

I guess it is about 50/50.

I don’t usually actively think about the past, unless I am triggered by something. For example, I would look into the past to make an informed decision in projects. Or when Google photos shows me highlights from the past, which would make me think of the good old times.

I feel I would tend to think of the future a bit more than the past. Thinking or worrying about the impact of my actions, or inactions. There are some bits of perfectionism in me.

Though I’m thinking or hoping to change that via blogging here. Just blog in the moment. Don’t overthink about the past or the future. Just blog it, one post at a time.

If something goes wrong, we can edit the post, or make another post to explain it.

This is like what we say in coding. Shipped code is better than perfect code that never get shipped. A published post is better than a perfect post that never get published.

Don’t overthink it. Just ship it. Just blog it.

My answer to the Bloganuary January 3 post:

This is going to be a short one. Partly because it is easy to answer, and mostly because I am quite occupied today. 😂

I attended University of Malaya to study Computer Science, major in Software Engineering.

The university is the oldest university in Malaysia. It was (and maybe still is) considered as the most prestigious one in the country.

I stayed in the 8th Residential College / Kolej Kediaman Kinabalu for the whole three years. I was quite active and joined many activities at that time, and won a number of awards for my contributions and achievements.

It was one of the best times in my life. Filled with memories. Good ones and some not so good ones. Mostly good. 🙂

This post is a response to the Bloganuary January 2 post:

Spending time with my daughter is play time. Taking her to places, enjoying good food, walking with her in the park, singing made-up creative silly songs with her, reading books to her in book stores and bed time stories before she sleeps.

I like watching movies too. I have watched all the Christopher Nolan movies. Love all his mind-bending, mind-blowing storytelling. And also Makoto Shinkai. Parasite movie is great. I enjoy watching great movies, even if they are in foreign language.

Occasionally I play some computer games too. The most recent one is FTL: Faster Than Light which I got for free from Epic Games. Good strategy game.

Every Friday, my team has a social call session where we have some random social chat and a social game. Usually we play on Board Game Arena.

Recently I also introduced and played Tak with my team mates on https://playtak.com/. It’s a very good strategy board game, with a very interesting game history. Unfortunately it’s not as well known as many other board games. I tried to find a physical Tak board game in Malaysia, but I couldn’t find it. Hopefully that will change. And hopefully that change starts from me.

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So the above is more of a layman point of view.

Let’s get a bit more philosophical.

People say “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”.

But what if work is play, and play is work?

What if the things that you are working on and bring you money are also the things that you are passionate about, and bring fun and joy to you, and bring meanings and purpose to your life?

I think Matt is a good example. He has dedicated more than 50% of his life working on WordPress and open source. And he is going to continue to do that until he can’t do it anymore. It is work and also play that brings joy and meaning.

In the grand scheme of things, I’m still seeking the ultimate meaning and purpose of my life. But I am lucky and fortunate enough that I discovered my passion at an early age during my school time, and that I am working on things that I enjoy doing and play to my strength.

I used to work / play on LeetCode (see my LeetCode profile). It’s part work because it helps me improve my programming skills and build my online profile. It’s also part play because I see it like a game and I enjoyed doing it (until I found out that sometimes even though my solutions passed the test, they are actually incorrect. This shall be a post for another day).

And same goes to the things I do in my daily life. I enjoy coding (while still learning PHP which is one of my biggest challenges), solving problems, creating things and contributing to open source, sharing my things with the world. Are they my work? Or are they my play?

I guess in the end, what I want to say here is:

Make the best playtime your worktime.

Make the best worktime your playtime.

It may not be achievable for everyone. But if you have achieved that, you may have found a good state in life.

This post is a response to the following Bloganuary January 1 prompt:

I have challenges in life. To keep things short and simple, I’ll just focus on challenges related to my work in Automattic right now.

The one biggest challenge for me in Automattic is PHP.

I joined Automattic in September 2020 as a Senior JavaScript Engineer. I like JavaScript, front-end development with React, and all the UI visual stuff. I did not have professional development experience with PHP in my career prior to that. (I should talk about my professional career and my thoughts and experience with PHP in separate posts.)

Throughout the past three years in Automattic, I have received feedbacks from my team leads and peers, that PHP is the biggest thing in my “room for improvement” department.

And, just like how I have been thinking to start this blog, I have also been thinking to challenge my own status quo, get out of my comfort zone, and work on leveling up my PHP skills.

The easiest one is probably learn by reviewing. For example, I reviewed the PHP code in PR Force marketing menu items order in our WooCommerce repo.

But reviewing and reading code isn’t the same as writing code. I should start writing and getting my hands dirty with PHP.

I did start with some small steps, writing PHP code by referring to some existing PHP code base with some minor changes. For example, I created PR Add Default Fallback Marketing Channel Recommendations recently, which is one of the projects I’m working on.

I’m hoping one day, my PHP skill would be good enough that I am comfortable to create an app or a WordPress plugin on my own, e.g. a to-do list plugin, inspired by TodoMVC.

I think that would be a pretty good milestone to celebrate.