Mogic considers

The ability to give up well is more important than you might think

I wrote a program for the first time in a while to play a prank using electronic circuits and the IoT, ran it for a while, and stopped halfway through.

The goal is to surprise people rather than to make them perform advanced operations, so we just create them while combining sources from here and there.

What I realized when I stopped halfway through was that I had a better idea of the difficulty of what I was working on and the amount of time I would have to worry about it than I had in the past right before I stopped.

Although the actual measurement cannot be obtained without actually doing it, I was not too far off from my expectation when I checked the similar sources later as an answer to the question.

You can take plenty of time without worrying about time, or you can stop halfway through.

Such a decision will be necessary when learning something that is unknown to you.

This style of learning, also known as exploratory learning, emphasizes persistence, but I believe that the ability to give up is more important than one might think.

Holidays, hobbies, boredom, 21st century

We regularly receive the following complaint from intern students: "I am so bored on my days off. I have no hobbies, so I laze around and regret it.

When I asked him if he really has no hobbies, I was surprised to hear that he does not.

Cooking, tea, shopping, walking, reading manga, watching Netflix, playing games, internet, barbecuing, sightseeing.

I think those could be hobbies, but something else seems to be stuck because they are not hobbies and boredom is not confusing.

Incidentally, although there are many theories, the concept of "leisure" and having more than two days off per week is said to have become widespread in the 1930s after the Industrial Revolution.

From there, leisure facilities for weekend play were built, national parks for mountain hiking were developed, and a style of extended vacation stays was created.

But come to think of it, it is only 100 years old, and in Japan it is probably even shorter.

And so now we are constantly connected online, and the distinction between time spent working and even time spent having fun is blurring.

As the difficulty of their way of life continues to increase, we continue to discuss what is a good way for them to live.

Transparency of the Mona Lisa

I have heard that Da Vinci's Mona Lisa has amazingly clear skin.

It seems that several very thin, nearly transparent films are layered on top of each other, which is unthinkable in a normal production process.

If it is applied while it is still dry, it will mix with the layer below, and the time and effort required to wait several months and apply another coat of paint, which is a daunting task, will show through.

Paint, wait, look, think, and paint again.

The transition in thinking must have been considerable, since they first started painting and then layered on the constantly changing ideas.

I can't spend this much time on it, but I may record how my thinking changed at the beginning and end of one project.

The initial feeling, the way you feel during the process, the ideas you arrive at, and what you see when you look back later.

There are good changes and bad changes for me, and when the limits that were unconscious and blurred become beautifully transparent, all is well.

Like a little yacht.

I went to a small sailboat training course over the weekend and my back was stiff, probably because I sat on a hard deck and chair for a long time.

There are many terms to learn and many actions to perform, so my head is full of ideas.

To begin with, a sailboat has two sails, and the rudder (tiller) is operated with one hand by adding or subtracting a sheet (rope) in conjunction with the sails.

The weather changes from moment to moment, the wind swings in increments, and you have to feel the waves ahead of you.

When I operate, there are so many elements that I can't change well and I can't always get into the flow.

When you get used to it a little bit and suddenly it fits well, it's like riding the wind and it becomes fun.

This is a sense of oneness with nature that is not found in boats that are powered by electricity.

In this way, I think it is similar to starting a business in that you are groping and feeling and changing.

The faint voice of a client, the flutter of a new market, money that seems to disappear, a desperate effort to hang on.

Even if you think you have to respond well to this or that, it usually doesn't work.

The only thing to do is to seek the moment when we can ride the wind as we feel it.

We began creating subsidiaries several years ago because we wanted the members we worked with to have that kind of experience.

It is a feeling that cannot be experienced by watching from afar or riding in a boat that is being piloted by someone else.

We are still rowing out on our own little yacht and struggling to fit everything in.

We are looking forward even if it rains hard or the waves are high, so we are sure that one day we will catch the wind successfully.

Reading books, a bit of a transition

Since entering the workforce, there has been a slight transition in the way I read books.

At first I don't know anything, so I pick up an introductory book.

Once I got used to it, I wanted to understand one area comprehensively, which led me to archival-type reading.

Archival reading means reading books in one field this way and that, but with a twist.

There are more than 100 books on the shelves of bookstores in any one field, and it is not advisable to read them all.

So I think how can we learn in the shortest distance, just 80% of the total amount of knowledge.

As some of you have noticed, we use something called Pareto's Law.

The idea is that 20% of the total matter can represent 80% of the results.

You start reading thinking that you can get 80% of your knowledge in 20 out of 100 books, and then you start abbreviating more and more in a nested fashion, thinking that you can get 80% of what you want to say in 20% of a book, or that if you learn 20% of the technical terms, you can explain 80% of the whole.

Even then, there are limits, so I had to compress it reasonably well to get the whole picture before I could talk to anyone.

Eventually, this method will not be able to wipe out the antiquity of the archive itself.

The next idea was streaming reading.

Unlike the archives, I only look at books that have been reviewed this week, books that acquaintances and friends said were good last week, and magazines that caught my attention today.

The idea was to try to capture a sense of the season, the now, in an atmosphere that was more than just words.

However, over the past few years, we have increasingly felt the limitations of this as well.

After thinking about the cause, I suspect that the production process of the book medium is a contributing factor.

It takes six months for the author to come up with the idea and discuss it with the editor at the publishing house, six months to several years to start writing it, and another six months to get it printed and into circulation, which is 1.5 years at the shortest and several years at the longest.

In the past, until a book was distributed, the information contained in it did not often get out ahead of time.

However, as the Internet has developed, some of the relevant information is easily circulated.

A group of highly finished texts received 1.5 years after the author came up with the idea, and fragmented, coarse messages sent out here and there around the time the author came up with the idea.

It feels like the two are competing and we need to develop new ways of doing things again.

In keeping with the fault lines of the times

I know this is sensational, but I think we are seeing a major fault line of the times.

The disagreement in the ABC prediction problem in mathematics and the development of the discussion from the AdS/CFT correspondence in physics is difficult to understand as a live human being.

The overlaying of the impossible at the same time has become an important theme, and we are discussing what we should do.

Morning Activities and Flexible Work Hours

The morning before Golden Week is very busy.

While disinfecting the soil of the plants that unfortunately died on the rooftop in black plastic, and painting the wood of the mobile coffee stand that will be deployed in the summer with mahogany-colored wax, I have been working on the preliminary work, producing a pattern for the electric dolls that will surprise everyone around the rainy season.

Until last year, I used to work with anyone who wanted to an hour or so before everyone else arrived at the office, but the flex system was introduced last week, making it difficult to do so in any way.

The people who are rustling around and the people who are tapping away on their keyboards. Of course, both of them do something useful for the company, but they are very different from each other.

But then I reminded myself that no one cared and proceeded to work as much as I wanted.

Enough to make a stuffed animal.

Hearing that you have to create an IT system from scratch can seem daunting.

There is a lot of jargon with CSS, HTML, programs, and servers.

There are so many things you can't figure out by browsing in a bookstore or searching the web.

I want to do that," but there are too many obstacles in the way! but there are too many obstacles to overcome before you can make it happen.

The original idea was to be open source and free to create anything.

I thought such an atmosphere was not good, so I asked a team of young people, including interns, to create an application in a day, a week, or a month.

Ideally, you want to make a stuffed animal, cut the fabric, sew it, and put on the buttons.

If you have the "feelings you want to deliver," such as the hope that the child will be the one to talk about the day's events before bed, it doesn't matter if it's clumsy or rough.

It will be no fun if you are only mastering the techniques and your mind is somewhere else.

The apps so created are listed on the site as MicroTech.

Please see their struggles, which are hidden from view, when you have time.

MicroTech website: http://microtech.mogic.jp/