This article is a review and reflection on the week from 2023-12-31 to 2024-01-06.
Cheers to a New Beginning#
On New Year's Eve, I spent time with Xiong Xiaohua at a friend's house. Although we forgot to bring the switch controller, it was fortunate that Everybody 1-2-Switch! supports online gaming with smartphones. While playing the game, we could already see some scattered fireworks outside the window. When there were 30 seconds left to enter the new year, we hurriedly went to the balcony and immersed ourselves in the fireworks of the whole city. In the cold wind, we wished each other a happy new year, watched the distant horizon light up with fireworks, and then stepped into 2024.
Life#
Daily Challenges of Annual Plans#
On December 30th last year, Xiong Xiaohua and I made a plan for 2024. From the beginning of the new year, we started checking off the plan together. Although we overestimated our own motivation, having a goal is always good. Previously, I saw Marc Backes' Goals for 2023 🎯 webpage, which quantifies and visualizes (and in style) the updates and encouragement for completing annual plans. This gave me inspiration, and the first thing that came to mind was to list my reading list and push myself to read more books.
Steamed Buns#
Since buying an electronic scale on Action at the end of last year, I have finally overcome the dilemma of "a little" and "appropriate" and made breakthrough progress in making dough, maintaining a stable level. This week, at the request of Xiong Xiaohua, who was hit by the Little Red Book algorithm, we tried to make colorful steamed buns with pumpkin and spinach. Except that the spinach didn't rise well for some unknown reason and ended up being a bit hard to eat, overall it was a success. In the end, we both experienced the joy of making handicrafts like we did when we were children.
Manuscript Reviews#
On the first working day of the new year, I received a new invitation from Manning Publications to review the manuscript of "Django in Action". I had already participated in two rounds of reviews before, but because the manuscript of this book was released gradually, this time I will review new chapters. I didn't expect to go from being a reader and consumer to an amateur reviewer, but I will need to be more careful when reading because I know the frustration of making mistakes as an author. Over the next three weeks, I will review the new draft of this book and review Django again.
This week, I received the official confirmation email for being selected to participate in The National SDG Challenge. I applied last summer but was not selected, but this time I was selected for the Winter edition. I was assigned to the IBM Team, and the problem given by IBM is practical and in a direction that I like, and I can also make use of my previous experience. In the WhatsApp group created by the organizer, I found that the composition of our team is quite diverse through everyone's self-introduction. Everyone has different professional backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, and hobbies, but we all have the same goal. This should be an interesting experience.
Korean Drama#
This week, Xiong Xiaohua and I finished watching the popular drama "Squid Game". The whole drama is an excellent commercial series, with good control of the rhythm under the dual narrative, and a relatively complete ending without leaving any loose ends. The only flaw is that the ending is a bit too deliberate in order to set the stage for the second season.
The bloody scenes in the drama are explicit to an unnecessary extent, even reminiscent of the style of "Saw". After discussing with Xiong Xiaohua, I realized that I, like those VIPs, was watching this "horse race" behind the camera and gaining experience from this bloodshed and cruelty. This reflection of reality and the mirror of the drama, I don't know if it was intentional by the director or our over-interpretation.
On Xiong Xiaohua's recommendation, we started watching "Reply 1988". Although we have only watched one episode, I already like this drama. Although it was broadcast in 2015, it delicately captures the historical atmosphere of 1988: in the June 1997 democracy movement, South Korea, which broke free from military dictatorship and moved towards democracy, was about to host the 1988 Seoul Olympics before it turned one year old. The complex emotions that came with it include the excitement of South Korea's return to the world, the optimism under the Asian economic miracle, and the sense of reality of people returning to individual life. A slogan hanging in the Olympic venue in the drama reflects this expectation well:
The world moves towards Seoul, Seoul moves towards the world.
Data Science#
This week, I continued my plan of watching one section of Datacamp every day and completed the course "Introduction to Statistics in Python". The content of this course is not so difficult, but it has rekindled my curiosity about statistics. In the past few months, it has been continuously eroded by the pre-statistics course. In this course, I learned about statistics distributions, and I plan to write a separate summary. Also, following the principle of learn in public, I: