Tag Archives: Blogging

Thirty-six

Asides, ,

The Earth has taken thirteen thousand six hundred and forty days to go around the sun since I have come on board. What a journey it has been so far.


Three hundred sixty-five days (plus three) ago, I was at the office, sharing good food with my friends and colleagues which coincided with our team’s return to full operations after several months of being shut down by the pandemic.


This time around I’m just at home with my family as the pandemic is still far from over and has taken quite a toll on all of us. Monsoon rains and a magnitude 6.7 earthquake earlier in the day made this annual event something definitely unique and worth remembering.


The projects started last year – the podcasts and newsletter, have been all but neglected and it’s been a struggle to get back at it. So it would be fitting to finally break the blogging hiatus with this update. It’s not that I have completely stopped writing, I simply stopped publishing. Most of what I’ve written since May has been kept in a personal journal and a note-taking app that has been steadily being filled up with notes, ideas, and rough drafts of upcoming pieces that I hope you’ll enjoy or at the very least find interesting.


Aside from nearly half a year’s worth of content-in-development, my book collection has grown quite considerably. One of the goals for this year is to finish a book per month. With four months left, the to-read pile has really grown.


Looking back, and in the context of the pandemic, I should not be too hard on myself as making it this far, in good health, and sitting on a big pile of drafts is still quite an achievement knowing that there are others that have had far worse.


With that in mind, I have decided that as I will get back to regularly publishing content starting today, part if not most of it must be of help to others. Content that will enrich their knowledge, or perhaps help them with their own struggles and contribute to their own success no matter how big or small.


So I hope you’ll stick around. Together, I’m quite positive we’ll all make it through to see better days.

Thirty-five

Asides, , ,

I am now in my mid thirties. Life has been tough, especially in the last couple of years. And I never thought that I would be alive in the age of a pandemic. On the other hand, it’s been fun, challenging and worth the pains, struggles, setbacks and even defeats. It’s great to be alive!

The past couple of months, in particular, have been amazing – I’ve launched a science podcast, a newsletter, and recently, an advocacy group that had already made great strides towards its goals. Other side projects are steadily moving forward even if it’s in small baby steps.

In the coming days, I’d be joining other brave bloggers and netizens in a great and noble endeavor. Just to be in their company is both humbling and a great privilege.

On the home front, I am mightily proud of being able to sharpen my cooking skills. Salads and more vegetables have become part of my diet. Something my mom would definitely be proud of. Perhaps I’d talk more about it in the upcoming posts.

Much more needs to be done. My growing pile of books to read for starters. Sticking to regularly updating this blog and adding a few chapters to a writing project that’s really close to heart.

Adding a few pounds wouldn’t hurt. Improving my skills and staying healthy – getting through this year in the age of coronavirus would remain my primary pre-occupation. To all my friends, colleagues, readers and followers, thank you to each and one of you!

A blog reboot

Daily dose

“Punch the keys, for God’s sake!” – I could still remember the way Sean Connery screamed that while pacing around with a glass of scotch in his hands in one of my favorite movies about inspiration and writing, Finding Forrester.

That in addition to the various writing courses I have taken online in the last couple of weeks and my constantly growing list of notes and bookmarks are the inspiration to my latest blogging reboot. As you may have noticed, this blog is once again carrying the Four-eyed Journal as its name. I’ve come full circle, so to speak, in a grand plan to meet the following goals:

  • Write consistently
  • Update this blog regularly
  • Grow my writing portfolio
  • Serve you, my dear readers, with useful finds from the internet

In concrete terms, from this day I would post a regular serving of links to interesting finds from the internet and social media laced with my commentary. It would also include pseudo personal notes about daily life. It would be posted on this blog every other day or at least five days a week.

Then from time to time, I would post an essay or a long-form and highly polished piece at least twice a month. If you are a subscriber to my weekly newsletter, Monday Mash-up, then you’d know how it will look like. Worry not though, as the juiciest bits of content would still be reserved for it.

So in the coming days, expect more fresh content although as a fair warning, the first few posts would be a bit rough around the edges as I try to get more comfortable into this new blogging routine. Hopefully, the updates would be of good use for you, my dear readers. If you have any questions or even objections to this, do let me know in the comments section below or get in touch via email. I would also love to see anything that you found online that you think is interesting, cool, funny, controversial – anything that caught your fancy.

Lastly, a sort of medium-term goal, I would publish a podcast that summarizes the week’s ‘daily dose’ that dives deeper into one or two of the links that would be mentioned. It could feature a guest as an expert or someone that I could pick brains with just to spice things up and present a different take.

Exciting times ahead and hoping you’ll stick around for the ride.

New book: The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow & Charles Stross

Daily dose, ,

Sometime in 2007 or 2008, back in my blogging heyday, I stumbled on I Write Like. It’s a nifty website that checks ‘which famous writer you write like by analyzing your word choice and writing style‘. The first result back then was that I write like Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author and co-editor of the weblog Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow. Which was a delight because I enjoy his writing and we are both activists. Since then I’ve been following his blog and podcasts and finally, I got a hard copy of one of his books – The Rapture of the Nerds. Co-authored with Charles Stross.

The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross

Before I wrote this post, I tried to run the analysis again and the results were the same. 🙂 Quite excited to get started on this book and pretty sure I’d be buying Cory’s other books in the months to come.

Hopefully, reading more and more would help me get back my blogging mojo and someday I’d be able to publish a book as well.

New beginnings…Part 2

Daily dose,

After four months of absence I’ve returned to blogging. Welcome to the new Ctrl + Alt + J! I must admit that it’s not been an easy path to this very first post. Since 2015, I’ve been battling a severe case of writer’s bloc, blogger’s bloc or fatigue. The steam has ran out. The engines have stopped. Drafts were not even being finished. Social media took up most of my time and energies. Around me my fellow bloggers have moved on to bigger roles in other platforms. Some like myself have just simply faded in the digital background.

Thankfully, the passion never died. The urge was still there. The need to express, examine, question and engage kept burning no matter how small the flame was. On the technical side, I’ve lost the original domain this blog was on and came to be known for. Fellow bloggers and the very few long-time readers would have noticed the subtle difference in what’s seen on your browser’s address bar as you’ve landed on this blog.

Also lost are 6 years of blog posts, comments, tags, links and other content. Saddening, true but I’m looking at it from a ‘clean slate’ angle. To truly move forward sometimes it’s best to just simply let go of the past. So you’d notice an empty or non-existent archives page. Soon though, there will be one and it will be filled with new stuff as the days will go on.

The best bit about this new version of Ctrl + Alt + J is that it’s now a secure corner of the web. That’s literally secure because you’d see in your browser’s address bar the “https://” protocol preceding my new domain. It’s my gift and commitment to you my dear readers so that you’d have a secure connection to this blog. Thank you for reading up to this point and I’d give your time back now as you’ve reached the end of this post. Hope to see you around in the many more posts to come along.