i have been just cramming my brain with stuff lately, so much so i can even feel my brain starting to slow down on uptake just like how when charging a battery the current drops off as the battery gets full. Not to say i have filled my brain, just that i have done a burst load and it is starting to show.
I finally got a decent understanding of mail servers (probably the last big element of our modern internet that was a complete unknown for me) and the SMTP protocol. This wasn’t super fun but it was interesting and useful.
Lately web frameworks have been the knowledge of choice. I am doing Django and Ruby on Rails concurrently. (yes, i mean i am doing both at the same time) When I started looking at frameworks I got recommendation from each one of my friends who happening to be in different camps. Ed was all about the CakePHP, John lives Django, and Keith really believes in Rails.
I always thought I would go Symfony or CakePHP since I already know PHP fairly well which was the best argument to follow Ed. However Keith did the best job of getting me onboard with his framework of choice by simply leaving his Ruby for Rails behind in my apartment. I eventually just picked the book up out of curiosity and now I am more than half way through it (and it is a decent sized book). I am picking up Django to work on this project with John (more on that later) so this framework is out of necessity.
Funny after everything I am not learning the frameworks for the language that I already know, but rather the 2 I know the least about. In retrospect that seems like the best course of action, since I will learn the most being in a foreign space. Speaking of which, I am really enjoying trying on completely new languages that aren’t related to languages based on the third letter of the alphabet and semicolons. Some of these constructs and ideas are just so different, that I literally have to revisit how I decompose problems. Its about time that I made the jump into a new space that requires new mental flexibility, it will for sure only make me better.
I am seriously considering pickup more book again. I seem to spend more and more money on either books or groceries (i can’t advocate enough the importance of getting the best ingredients you can). I still have a huge stack of books to read, but that doesn’t stop my appetite for knowledge. I am getting so far ahead of myself I am considering buying books that aren’t even finished. First since I have Keith’s book on Ruby for Rails programmers, I would like a book on Rails so that I can actually get better at Rails and not just Ruby. This book seems to fit the bill, I would get the beta pdf now and the actual book once it goes to press. While looking at that last book, this one on git caught my eye. I am pretty well versed in subversion however, I would like to pick up git since it again requires a new mental model (one that I do not currently have) and it seems to be all the rage. Next I have been reading the django book like a mad man, but I think I am in the opposite situation of my Rails situation. Here I am reading on the framework and would like a book on the language, so eventually I think I would like to get something on Python.
so this is probably old news to newer generations of students since I am quickly becoming an old fart but Ed just showed me some stuff on Provigil. If you don’t know Provigil is a drug for people who are narcoleptic, but if you are just a normal person and you pop a pill you become super focused and awake.
Apparently a larger percentage of students at universities are now on this stuff, much larger than is commonly accepted by university administrative staff…about 60% of the population on average, and higher in certain specific fields.
I just to drink Bawls when i had an assignment due, and boy did that stuff do the trick. You could kick out a top notch assignment in the last 12 hours and then go to sleep. It took you up nice and easy and let you back down just as nice and didn’t prevent you from going to sleep if you so desired. (you would have to lie down to sleep, you wouldn’t fall asleep while working) Heck if I could find the stuff here in Vancouver I would buy a case.
Anyways some of these links are pretty crazy, you can buy it here without a prescription and this article is about someone who wanted to see if it was an urban legend or real. He managed to do an obscene amount of work while on the drug.
I have never liked regular caffeine from coffee and coke since the high was so abrupt and it let you down hard. Then you could sometimes get the shakes etc, and I have found that conventional forms of caffeine also made your thoughts kind of agitated since you have this kind of feeling of alertness. Bawls on the other hand, since you went up gracefully you were able to just think more clearly and you didn’t feel agitated or different, just awake as if you had just finished having the best sleep of your life. So I found my solutions to my assignments were quite elegant, considerably more so than if I had done them on coffee, heck probably more elegant than if I had just done them on my own with the bawls.
Now what are the side affects to Provigil? Apparently you could suffer from weight loss! No wonder this shit is like gold on campuses. You get smarter and you lose weight, what a combination and apparently it is not addictive. Although like I was telling Ed, “it may not be addictive but it sounds like it is easy to become addicted to the benefits of the drug if not the drug itself”.
Even I have to admit I am a little curious, although $149 a pack is a bit expensive, certainly more than a case of bawls (if only I could find the stuff).
Keith had a good post about a speech given by Randy Pausch, after watching it I found another video taken a few months later at graduation. (this is a few months longer than he was given to live)
I really enjoy these kinds of talks or the speech given by Steven Jobs (a coincidence they both had cancer of the pancreas) . I don’t talk about it a lot but I really do like reading/hearing about people who have died or are closer to death than the rest of us because I find them to be a great source of insight into life. (this might explain why I enjoy biographies so much)
Alot of the things people say as they have fewer days ahead then they do behind are things everybody kind of knows but never really acts on. I like to try and get as much of this wisdom as possible and act on it while I am still young. Its a shame that most of us have to be in that position before we can finally listen and act, especially when if we look around the messages have always been there.
A few of these messages come to mind, I was listening to a podcast this morning by a VC and one of his lines was “people follow the money” and I realized how so many people can end up unhappy. Should people really be following the money? I don’t think so, I don’t think people dying are consoled by their money, I think people should follow their hearts and happiness. I know that sounds hippy-ish, but I mean it in the most practical way possible. You definitely need to survive, and get paid, but should you really be optimizing your life for money? Should you be following the money? Following what makes you happy is probably a more wise you of your limited time, and infact I think most people follow money because they believe it will lead them to happiness (which it rarely does, besides why go after money to get happiness when you can just go after happiness from the start).
In line with that, my favorite quote from that video is that nobody beats the reaper. Everybody dies, and the only way to be okay with that is to make sure you live a life that you are happy with.
i got some good stuff done this weekend, i really enjoyed it. we started off by going to the apple store opening in pacific center. i only found out it was opening this weekend through twitter, but i managed to still snag a free t-shirt so i can’t complain.
Next we headed off to granville island to find the Organic Oceans boat so that we could get some fresh and local spot prawns off the boat. These guys are huge and yummy, although a bit pricey ($12/lbs). Overall I still think it is worth it, since they are so fresh and i want to support the local/sustainable fisheries.
Arianne and I also started two herb window gardens that will hopefully provide us with some nice fresh herbs that we can use and will hopefully be cheaper than buying those baggies of non-dried herbs in store.
Oh and to make those prawns go even further, i took the shells and heads and made a nice leek, tomato, and carrot bisque with a pinch of jalapeño and white wine. I am super pleased with the results.
Eddy: You are right, Jamie at home is pretty awesome but it is a bit worrying how he can cut raw beef in the garden and then toss a salad two seconds later.
ed sent me this link to this very cool video and page explaining what is occurring in the video.
it is an old school relay computer experiencing a buffer overflow. very cool!
another video that is unrelated but also very cool. Here is a radio controlled f16 model airplane that has a jet engine! when did toy planes get their own jet engines??!!
