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My 2021 Collections

# non-fiction, 2021-12-29

I’m a hoarder, so I collect. These are my beloved items of the year.

Favorite Quotes

Impactful Thoughts

1. Analog and digital as personality traits

I learned about this from a podcast “不可理论”. The original phrasing can be found in Alexander Galloway’s post How to Spot an Analog Philosopher.

Trait can be confining if taken too seriously. But personally, I found identifying myself as an analog thinker helped me make some good lifestyle/aesthetic choices.

2. Words shape reality

This is a silly observation that I benefit a lot from. Compared to other senses, words form a most conceptual yet often overlooked reality. It functions through daily communication and inner voices, and secretly influenced our perception of the world.

More on this, Stanley Kubrick once complained about how the average audience are oriented more to words than to images. And here is an excerpt from “How to win a beauty contest” (1960) by Jacque Mercer:

Your stage presentation in a beauty contest is exactly like a role in a play. You must have stage movements, you must have characterisation and you even need to learn some lines. The difference is that in a beauty contest the lines are not spoken out loud. If you think these words and phrases in your mind, however, the expression on your face will tell a story.

3. Curse of knowledge

I touched on this in my previous post, that learning can often become an excuse for not doing. More importantly, the possession of knowledge undermines our belief in doing things with our own hands. Even when we manage to embark on an effort, the results rarely satisfy us, due to the mismatch between skill and taste.

Other Thoughts New to Me

1. Wright’s Law and other rules

The law is simple: production costs decreased at a 10%~15% rate for every doubling of production numbers. It was first brought up to model the airplane, and recently(?) found its place in computer hardware industry. In specific, some predict that SSD will become cheaper than HDD by the year of 2026. Bryan Cantrill, at the first p99con, talked about the price of transistor and how that facilitates edge computing. (BTW, I just love the look of his new company Oxide)

And there are other rules: the 5 Minute Rule (1987, 1997, 2007), Latency Lags Bandwidth (2004).

2. Mind-Body Synergy

This is an interesting field of research that I’m only recently aware of. It basically focuses on how mind controls the body in strange ways. I’m not an expert so I’ll just paste some publications here.

3. Inline more

Read John Carmack on Inlined Code. I’m completely sold and have been rooting for it in my daily work.

4. Outsourcing leads us astray

5. 8 Bit & 8 Bitish Graphics

Technologies New to Me

AI powered:

Graphics:

Collaboration:

My ideas found elsewhere:

Favorite Films

This year I watched 293 films+shows. I can see a big decline in amount and quality compared to last year.

Four people stood out in my memory:

Other memorable films:

and TV shows:

Favorite Books

This year I finished 54 books. These ones cultivated new passions of me:

These are my other favorites:

Favorite Musics

This year I listened to 242 new albums, mostly R&B and electronic.

Top musicians (in order):

Best albums from other artists:

Best soundtrack albums:

Things I Tried

Plans for 2022

I don’t like making plans. But I do have a few wishes for the future me:

Now, I’ve prepared a few more quotes for the new year, and bon voyage everyone~

When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.

– Steven Pressfield, “War of Art”

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

– Theodore Roosevelt