Let’s talk about Facebook. You have people who are in an uproar about Facebook opening up your data to the world. Why is it that the same people aren’t making the same complaints about LinkedIn? You know that if you pay up for LinkedIn you can go through and look at people’s profiles.

The difference is in the way the the different social networks have been marketed. LinkedIn is like a professional job fair; you want anyone who is a potential employer to see you there. On the other hand, Facebook is like a college party; and the rules for the college party is that you might whisper and gossip about what’s going on but you certainly do not broadcast to the whole world.

And then you have Twitter, blogs, etc. It’s too much! I would be really curious about future public figures and politicians five to ten years from now: will they have to do a net-purge of their online footprints in order to have a presentable image?

What about for myself? What about this blog?

In the last while of being dormant, I have been reading different blogs and making a note of what things I enjoy reading. I think that I still aspire to be a better writer, but in order to do so, you need to have real content. In order to have real content – you have to “give” something away. Perhaps it is something that happened privately or perhaps it is your new exciting theory of how the workplace interaction plays out.

I’m going to have to work on being a little bit more interesting first, haha!

(PS – Just moved my blog to a different hosting service. This post is mostly to make sure everything is still working fine.)

In line with the “doing whatever it takes theme,” we have to stand out in whatever we do in life to get noticed. So here’s to my current boss and future bosses: Google away, you’ve pretty much hit on the real Alfred Pang here.

(The teacher, Bryan Doyle, is familiar to me. A few years ago, I was in a class he was teaching at the time about entrepreneurship. I remembered that during last class, he was talking about auras, energies, and the like and how it helped in his own business dealings. I probably got hooked then.)

During the session last Saturday, he talked about many things. Maxwell Maltz. Visualization. Expectations. Creating versus uncovering. Being neutral. Beta, alpha, theta, delta brain frequencies. The Goldmind relaxation exercise. Auras. Source of truth and intuition. Healing. Soul, spirit, mind, body interactions. Dream interpretation (he interpreted some of ours).

Fascinating. I think that deep down, I’d like to belive that I have some Heroes-like abilities waiting to be unleashed.

I know exactly what she was talking about – I mean, I haven’t had anything new since September. Was I uninspired? No, not really. Maybe it was the crazy hours of work that was sucking my energy? No, I had energy for my salsa class. I think that I was just in a bit of a rut. A kick in the pants was what I really needed.

Of course, the question is: Why would I even want a kick in the pants?  Why blog? Even Seth Godin admits that personal blogs really aren’t bringing home the bacon, so to speak.

While I am still inspired by the success of some bloggers, I realize that I am who I am. The world is already better off with a Steve Pavlina; I need to find my own blogging success as Alfred Pang, rather than trying to imitate or copy someone else.

What does this mean in terms of my writings? How will I define blogging success? For your information, I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of living off AdSense revenue through this website.

As an introvert, it is pretty difficult to get inside my head through conventional means. I am pretty sure that there are people who are similar to me. Writing is an exercise in getting ideas out in a clear and understandable representation. And for those of you that are keeping score, blogging is a “staying upwind” activity. (Upwind = hard, with an uncertain chance of success; forces you to think and become better as a result.)

All I want is for someone to read my blog and say, “Yes, me too. I thought I was the only weird one.” That is success for me. I don’t claim to have all the answers. I don’t even want to claim that I am adding significant value to your life through my writings.

All I want to do, is to let you know that this shiny InterWebs is full of strange and wonderful humans, just like you and me.

While tipjoy was intended to reward content providers (i.e. interesting articles or useful software), I am interested in turning the mechanism on its head. In what cases would I be interested in rewarding my readers and users, instead of the other way around? The classic would be of course a lottery-based scheme to reward their patronage.

Of course, a higher-value reason why I would want to reward my readers is of course for market research. I still remember getting $100 for participating in something quite a few years ago.

So, in what case or scenario would you want to reward your users in a monetary way for their participation? Do you want more than just play-money karma? Penny for your thoughts…

Given that the provincial government is making policies to encourage going green, I too decided to go green.

http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/

I wished that I played it through once without reading the spoilers – but the experience is not diminished even though I know what will happen. The article (yes it has spoilers) where I originally read about Passage pretty much gave everything away if you can’t spare 5 minute (or you are having technical difficulties running it).

2007 has really been a slacker year for me, in terms of career and work. On the other hand, it has been personally productive: I think I have figured out what I want to be doing 5, 10, 20 years from now. For the longest time, I have been unable to personally make any long term plans – not sure why, just lack of perspective I suppose: it is like being short so you end up not being able to see too far down the path.

And for those of you not in the know, I have met someone wonderful. I would say that meeting her has been one of the most life-changing things in my life. (Hi honey! I love you!) It has certainly made 2007 a year to remember.

On the whole, I am feeling pretty awesome these days. So awesome that I don’t even feel like making any new year resolutions. The fact of the matter is, we can really make resolutions any time, any where we feel like. When I was reading 4-Hour Workweek, it was back in June and I was visiting my sister in LA – it sure didn’t stop me from doing the exercise from the first part of the book, which was making a list of 6 month and 12 month goals. And yes: getting a blog up was one of those 6 month goals. Sure, I didn’t finish off the entire list but I am certainly 100% better than moping around wondering what I should do with my life.

Looking back at my private journal entries also seem to reveal an interesting pattern. They seem to nearly neatly fall into three categories:

1. Backwards looking – For perspective and how past events has lead to that point in time.
2. Event recording – Simply making a note of a particular day’s events. Also records emotions and feelings of a particular day.
3. Future looking – Goal setting, direction setting. Usually in response to something that I am unhappy with or unsatisfied with.

Sometimes, all three will appear in a single day’s entry. I guess that I really have been making resolutions every time I write a “future looking” entry.

Okay I change my mind – I would like to make one new year’s resolution: I would like to write more entries for alfredpang.com! I would like to thank those of you who have personally told me that they find my writings interesting. It is very encouraging and I hope to have much, much more for you in 2008.

I think that I am usually reserved and private so the idea of putting myself out there is not an easy one to embrace. Here goes anyways – five ideas that I have been thinking about recently:

1. Startups – Instead of trying to do something original and wacky, try doing something that everyone will use. Specifically, I should think about dull, boring but useful applications. The market is big enough to support Yet Another Version of whatever you are doing. Just look at the success of 37signals – their products are the epitome of dull, boring but useful. (Don’t get me started about how Ruby on Rails makes everything sexier.)
2. Options – I remember looking at options trading about 5 years ago but then decided against it at the time. My rational at the time was that there didn’t seem like there was enough trading volume or interest and there was a pretty large spread. However, things seem to have picked up enough to warrant another look.
3. Trading – I am currently reading My Life as a Quant by Emanuel Derman. A pretty geeky read but quite interesting. One of the things that he likes to write about is the difference between the traders and the quants (quantitative analysts). Traders has all these tools to help them with the decisions, but ultimately it takes a lot of guts to pull the trigger to actually make the correct trade.
4. Career – The other recurring theme of My Life as a Quant is the idea of an evolving career. He started out as a physicist, then moved briefly into a programmer role in the C and UNIX heydays, and then finally as an analyst on Wall Street. While the decisions for the transitions were not necessarily deliberate plans, sometimes fate whispers things in your ear to guide you to where you should go.
5. Time Management – An exercise that I once did was to analyze where the 24 hours of a day go. I probably could have skipped watching 1.5 hours of TV without drastically affecting my quality of life (Futurama, Pinky and the Brain, Naruto). Then again, you need to have a bit of R&R now and then.

I am not sure where I really am at these days. I sure wish that fate would whisper just a little louder for me.