Cut the Cross Down

Many things happened in the past few weeks, but I didn't record them in a consistent manner. It's like I'm carrying less burden than before, but the consequences could be pretty bad in the long run.

Accomplishes: 

1. Finished the book "You can draw in 30 days" and managed to draw sophisticated 3D objects.

2. Finished reading the first DSLR photographing book and practised three weekends on  a second-hand Canon D7 camera. Learn everything from a scratch from Zhixing. Attended my friend, Jingping's harmonica concert.

3. Launched our Clockie app V1.0. Finished the V1.1 debugging and modification. On going for the V1.2. We consider this app to be our first experiment on how to make a real product. Besides UI and features, we are going to do some experiments on the business side as well, for instance the free-premium business model. However, since there are small issues with the current version, we still choose not to market it yet until the V1.2 comes out. 

4. Meetup with the YunReading team. Good to know that Yingbo is doing coding again on skyscanner and Aldrian is doing text mining and NLP research before going for his PHD study in the US. We are planning to open-source the YunReading project.

5. I found my new job in Visenze as a software engineer. Visenze is a tech startup specialised in image recognition. It's one of few real tech companies in SG. I was supposed to join them after my graduation. However, as Prof. Tung is so eager to make readpeer a product, I choose to finish the readpeer project first. The ReadPeer beta version is about to finish in late April including the iOS app and Android app. Though it wasn't a pleasant journey with no exposure to real clients and the business side, it is nice that the project is becoming more closed to a product. I cannot count it as an entrepreneurial experience since I've got no control over the product including the product design and decision making. A lot of useless features are included to add the complicity of the project, which is surely not my intention. I do not see myself as a lifelong software engineer, but more of a future project manager. Unfortunately, in the readpeer project, I was not given the privilege to learn new stuffs as a co-funder. I even got blamed for reading a business model book. Indeed, I lost most of my passions already when I'm more like a emotionless worker than an energetic entrepreneur that can change the world. I've got to learn more from real lean startups on how projects can be conducted, not only on the tech side, but also on the business side. I guess Visenze would be a nice place to learn when it's in a promising growing stage. For the ReadPeer project, I guess I'm already 仁至义尽. Though it might get millions of government fundings, I won't care any more. A lot of people get fundings from the government doing nothing but boasting themselves on useless projects. I'm not one of them. I'd rather do something really useful and stay passionate forever.

Losses:

I wasn't very religious in the past few weeks. Though I didn't do sinful things, I do feel myself cutting the cross down.