Freelancer.com

While having a nice sweet walk (or surf, if you wish) around the interwebs, I chanced upon this extraordinary website.

While I already know that freelancing is a pretty common thing (perhaps not so in my country), I've never thought that such a website would exist! A website which allows freelancers and paying parties alike to come together and find each other: in economics this would be the reduction of frictional unemployment. Or maybe not.

Anyway, I got a shock when I took a look at what other people are paying. Fifty bucks for a C# task to be completed in a day or two. Fifty measly, mediocre dollars. Being a student of C# myself (and I probably don't know any other language well enough to do a proper job), I was a bit confused for a moment or two. My prospects for the future if I continued in this IT industry... they suddenly looked pretty dim. I wouldn't want to go to work at the office, type code all day long till my head is about to explode, and then bring back home a pathetic grand and a half!

However, with the supply of IT professionals being so abundant (what with people from India, Russia, places I've never heard of), prices are sure to be driven down low. This would be especially so if companies were to take a broader stance and look beyond their own countries, and outsouce from freelancers from all over the globe. Maybe not so in Singapore, perhaps--I believe our culture is still much too conservative and not so risk-taking. Indeed, outsourcing from people you don't know poses a large potential risk... how if? the person fails to deliver?

Still, such websites are very disheartening to a soon-to-be young adult such as me. Take a look at this list: 25 whopping websites to find your dear freelancer... this is, this is, certainly not the direction I want this world to take. So many people offering to do professional jobs for half the money I'd like to do them for! Malevolent job stealers! Voleurs! Je deteste vous tous! Putains!

Let me enjoy this lifetime, oh dear God, and not thrust me into the depths of apocalypse.

Real Steel

I just got to watch this show: Real Steel.

Introduced to me by a friend of mine, I have to say that... it's really not a bad show at all! This is just coming from an ordinary cinema-goer, so you don't have to take my review as seriously as a professional movie critic. Well, here's the trailer for the movie:

 

First impression when I took a look at the trailer was this: it looked like Transformers, just not as impressive. I have to say that the Transformers franchise is really very appealing and spectacular, with all their bells and whistles--totally great CGI altogether, coupled with a not-too-bad storyline. Real Steel is unable to top Transformers in any way at all, and I guess the producers knew that from the very beginning, so they decided to take another direction. The movie is sophisticated in its own manner.

While I wouldn't say that this movie is a must-watch, I wouldn't say it's a bad movie altogether. It's the kind of movie where... it's great to watch, fulfilling, you get the bang for buck, but it doesn't leave a profound, lasting impact on you like Christopher Nolan's movies (Inception, Dark Knight), or Avatar (I've not watched that show however). Anyway, from this point onwards, I'll be talking about the movie, so there will be...

Spoilers. Having said that, let's move on. ;)

In this movie, there are two protagonists: Charlie, someone who seems like a good-for-nothing, irresponsible chap yet charming in his own way, and Max, his ballsy son whose mom passed away. Charlie used to be a professional boxer; however, the advent of robot boxing took away his career altogether, and now he's just participating in robot boxing (but he's not too good at it!). His long-lost son comes along, finds a trashed robot at the edge of a cliff, and keeps fighting his way through, together with his dad!

There are times where emotions swell, because you can just feel the desire for the Max's robot, Atom, to win, and Atom does just that. Some matches are very much like those in Hajime no Ippo, I would say, where the robot is about to lose... and yet he returns with a great comeback. Those would be the first and final two matches. The matches in between, however, shows how Atom devours his opponents quickly and skilfully. Unlike other fighting movies, however, Real Steel does not have the same action, thrill, and excitement that you get from martial arts movies (those China ones, where the fights are so well-choreographed it is such an amazement to watch).

Other than that, Real Steel brings to the viewer the emotions of love (fatherly love, mostly), fear (they lose, they lose everything), and justice (especially when beating down Zeus), put together with a subtle tinge of humour (those two make a great team!). This movie might not be a must-watch, but it is certainly not a bad movie. The ending... felt a big lacking, though. In French, I believe the word for it would be manque!

Why "Je t'aime", and not "J'aime toi?"

I'm not really good at French or anything like that; I'm still learning, and trying my best. Right now my French standard's pretty low, I can perhaps make out the gist of a news article, but nothing other than the gist. This article from About.com would give a rough idea about your fluency of a language (any language, not just French!), and right now I'd think that I'm still a survivor... moving on to a conversationalist!

Alright, so aimer in French means to love. One of the first few phrases I learnt in French was j'aime jouer le foot, which basically means "I like/love to play soccer". And then, from a beginner's point of view, to make a sentence "I love you" in French, it would simply be j'aime toi.

• Je is shortened to J' because it is followed by a vowel.
• Aimer is conjugated to become aime.
• Toi means you.

However, apparently j'aime toi is wrong! I didn't understand this until I learnt about reflexive verbs: je me lève (I raise myself, i.e., I wake), je me lave (I wash myself)... in these case the word me refers to myself! From a beginner's point of view, I never knew such a sentence structure existed in French... I always thought it had to be "[subject] [verb] [object...?]". I never knew it could be "[subject] [object] [verb]"!

Indeed language is very surprising. Je t'aime would then consist of the following:

• Je, which means "I".
• Te (you) is shortened to t' because it is followed by a vowel.
• Aimer is conjugated to aime (taking je into consideration).

Another way of saying "I love you" in French would be je t'adore, but I've no idea which one expresses a deeper sense of affection. For that, you have to ask someone who's better in French, someone who knows the nuances and subtleties of the language. I'm just learning and trying to share my experience right here, and I doubt any of it makes much sense anyway!

The passing of Steve Jobs

Wow, a young Steve Jobs does look charming!

Hey there, nice day to you. Steve Jobs passed away yesterday, on Wednesday, 5th October 2011. It came as kinda abrupt news to me as while I knew that he stepped down as CEO of Apple due to health concerns and such, I never knew his death was nearing. His passing came as a surprise to me, and sadness, dismay, to many others all over the world.

Yup, I never really did feel anything much towards his passing. To me, it was more like an event, an occurrence, much like any other normal incident. I don't have any Apple product with me. Nor am I dabbling in any Apple-related app programming of some sort. I've taken a look at Objective-C, and I'd say it's even more confusing and baffling than C++. Maybe I'm just not that good a programmer. ;)

I got the news of his death from my friend. And then... he kind of explained why his death was such a big thing. It was particularly because his company, Apple, has been producing cutting-edge, high-end products, that are not only high in demand, but also fetch high prices--the iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, among many... wait, I can't really think of any other products here, but let's just say many others for now.

My friend explained to me that, without Steve Jobs, the following probably wouldn't have happened:

• the advent of smartphones
• the advent of tablets
• the evolution of laptops (ultraportables, anyone?)

It is true, indeed, that Apple has been The One in recent years to constantly pioneer new technologies, new ideas, and new products. Much like a razor wind cutting through uncharted territory, Apple has been stepping into places never explored before, revolutionizing and innovating, and with constant success. I would admit to all of these. However, I'm not too keen on Apple products altogether. Why? For one, I find their products grossly overpriced. I'm still a pathetic student living off his parents, you know! I can't possibly afford the iPhones... that... about a quarter of my classmates have. For another, I find that once Apple produces something good, other companies jump on the bandwagon quickly after and come up with similar products that are reasonably satisfying. On top of that, I can be the unique kid on the block, the one with a different, snazzy, Motorola Flipout. ;)

I've been rambling quite a bit on why I don't really care too much about Apple products. At the end of the day, I recognise that Apple is a great company... much like Microsoft in older times, however constantly staying ahead of the game. Apple has this oomph! that other companies don't have. I also read an article somewhere (I think it was TIMES, they have this cool mobile app for Android; you can go check it out!) about how Apple's success can be largely attributed to its streamlined and consolidated business. I mean, you can't find any other corporation out there who has a store created by themselves, a phone created by themselves, a laptop created by themselves, OSes (be it the Mac OS or iOS) developed entirely by themselves, complementary apps (iTunes, App Store) all by themselves, customer service fully supported by themselves...

Every other IT company isn't like that. I mean, let's take a look at Microsoft. Yes, they develop OSes for computers and mobile phones, but do they make the computers and mobile phones? Nope! How about Samsung? the new kid on the block who's been producing some cool notebooks and netbooks lately. Oh, they do produce great products... television sets, notebooks, audio players, but do they develop OSes? I doubt it. Having said that, I'd admit it's quite a feat to have a company like Apple, because to excel at every aspect of your business, from production to development to support-side to retail to customer service, that, requires some Apple magic in itself.

I've been talking about Apple, Apple, Apple, with no mention of Steve Jobs at all. Why's that so? Well... I guess it's because I don't know him personally. I bet the millions, probably billions, of other people talking and blogging about him don't know him personally either! When we talk about Steve Jobs, we always associate him with Apple. We talk about how his presentations are cool (frankly speaking, I've never really watched his presentations, save for his screwups), his innovation, and how he spearheads the IT industry, but nobody really talks about how's he like as a person.

Perhaps... perhaps, after this incident, there'll be more talk about his personality and character. We'll see. Until then, peace out.