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23 April, 2008 
The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment. ~Doug Larson
I’ve been thinking about this word for a while. Just like how the universe wouldn’t get formed if even just one of the physics constant was a little bit different, it always makes me wonder what other life I can have if it didn’t turn up the way it did. Would I be happier now? would I be happier later? or is there even any difference?
Do you often wonder about this?
Happiness of course is whatever you want to define it as. To me … it is a state of which I am satisfied with myself. People keep on saying that happiness is a journey, not a state. But to me it is a state, so be it. I am talking about happiness that is more to just being content. It is not a state when you were happy when you eat your favorite ayam goreng, or when you get pooed by a bird (it’s a lucky sign according to the popular chinese belief), or when you manage to get a decent job. Once you are happy, you will be happy for a while because it is an accumulation of joyful events in your life. That kind of happy. I know I’m not being as clear, but my mind is currently clouded anyway.
It’s easy to define what was happiness in the prehistoric era. The challenges for those times were to avoid being eaten by other animals, and to feed the stomachs. Therefore the moment of living itself brought happiness to The Flintstones. Challenges correlated with happiness. Once culture and civilisation played a part in human’s life, suddenly filling our stomaches required us to get a job. So, we of course had to get a job. We did that, and then we were happy, again. A typical life of someone who lived 1000 years ago would be: born -> got a job -> (maybe procreated because that also made us happy :p) -> held the job for the lifetime -> died. Simple.
Happiness is a need for all of us. The prehistoric people were at the bottom of the pyramid, and Maslow said it is a normal progression to crave for more satisfaction in life when all the lower satisfactions have been reached. At the top of the pyramid, there are self-actualised people. Most of us fall into this category – people who are working toward fulfilling our potential, toward becoming all that we are capable of becoming. But here is the thing: what is it that each one of us are capable of becoming?
I am graduating this year. I have yet to come to terms with it. I won’t have ’student’ as my occupation anymore very very soon. I won’t be able to pay concession fee anymore (damn), and there are few more tidbits that come with it. The end of uni opens up a big hole about what can I become? Decisions have to be made at the end of the day, regardless of how much I wonder what it would be like if I decide otherwise ((it reminds me of The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost)). Ignorance is bliss and I wish I won’t spend more time thinking about it. Hobos sleeping on the road only worry about whether they can get food and a place to sleep for the night. Why the hell do I need to worry more?
Well I hope I will be able to find my happiness, sometime even in the faraway future, and I hope everyone who have to make similar decisions as what they are capable of will be, because thinking about it too much will make life less enjoyable.
ps. Gargh my last post was two months ago! &#@%#*! Work, recruitment and thesis are really stealing my time away…
Been playing with GWT ((was very shiny in May 2006)) lately – procrastinating from having to read journal papers. GWT seemed to be pretty good, I am mostly satisfied with the code I produced in terms of design. Much more satisfied than writing (and DEBUGGING) Java Script *eeek*. But I found the tutorial on GWT is very limited, especially around the actual widgets to create good UI. Maybe GWT users are assumed to be familiar with html/css/java script in general and therefore are proficient in creating UI.
GWT to me, brings a new level of creating UI. UI now can be created with OO concept, no more slabs of long and drowning html/javascript. A self-labeled button is a good example to showcase GWT ability.
What I usually see in the ‘Web 2.0′ app UI, is a radio button where the name of the button can be changed on the fly. See what I meant below, the state goes in order of (1) -> click ‘Unlabeled’ -> (2) -> type ‘Self-labeled’ -> (3)
When I click on the button label ‘Unlabeled’, a textarea will appear and allow me to change the label. Once I click outside the textarea, it will change back to the previous state, but with the new label.
Each of these self-labeled radio button can be created as a widget. The widget is a horizontal panel which consist of a nameless radio button, a label, and a text area. On (1), the radio button and the label are added to the panel. Clicking the label brings the state to (2) – the label is removed from the panel, and the textarea is added. When an onLostFocus event is triggered, the textarea is removed and the label is added back. Of course after the texts are matched between the two elements.
Here is some of the snippet of the code:
[cc lang="java"]
public class SelfLabeledButton extends Composite {
public SelfLabeledButton(String label) {
button = new RadioButton(”group”,”"); // nameless radio button
panel.add(button);
buttonLabel = new Label(label);
buttonLabel.addClickListener(listener);
panel.add(buttonLabel);
buttonTextArea = new TextBox();
buttonTextArea.addFocusListener(listener);
initWidget(panel);
}
private HorizontalPanel panel = new HorizontalPanel();
private RadioButton button;
private Label buttonLabel;
private TextBox buttonTextArea;
private MCListener listener = new MCListener();
private class MCListener implements ClickListener, FocusListener {
// when (1) -> (2)
public void onClick(Widget sender) {
if (sender instanceof Label) {
panel.remove(buttonLabel);
buttonTextArea.setText(buttonLabel.getText());
panel.add(buttonTextArea);
buttonTextArea.selectAll();
}
}
public void onFocus(Widget sender) {
// do nothing
}
// when (2) -> (3)
public void onLostFocus(Widget sender) {
panel.remove(buttonTextArea);
buttonLabel.setText(buttonTextArea.getText());
panel.add(buttonLabel);
}
}
…
}
[/cc]
I listen to podcast pretty frequently, so I thought I will list some of them that are really good. The topic itself matters, but the speaker is the one that matters the most. Have a lookie here, and I will update it as I go from now on. The link to the page is also available from the menu on your right.