Even more bonus points: Try to help someone else in the thread with their goals, especially clearing out those roadblocks and bottlenecks.
The most obvious roadblock is making money along the way. My plan is to do it by launching a small web product, blogging about the travel, working as a local on countries where I'm allowed to, and doing some freelance programming work.
I have at least one year to save some money and get started working on these ideas. I'm sure it will not be easy, but I want give it a try :)
(1) Peace and quiet costs money. You may find it difficult to work if you stay anywhere that the backpacker crowd congregates.
(2) The longer you stay somewhere the cheaper it gets. An example from my experience - I spent a month in chaing mai in northern thailand where I rented an apartment. Per night it would have cost £18 if I was staying for a few days. Staying a month meant they gave me a tenancy agreement and it worked out as about £8 p/night plus electricity which was about £15 for the month.
You might want to try spending a few nights at different youth hostels in the city you intend to stay, then find an apartment for a month or two in the area you like the most.
(3) Food is both massively over-priced and pretty crap if you buy it in the hotel or nearby restaurants to where you are staying. Try and go further afield to eat where the locals do. Don't be put off by street food - it's good and cheap.
(4) Take plenty of time to just relax and go with the flow. try and put yourself out there and make friends. Avoid tourists attractions and guide books. I went to thailand intending to do exactly this but somehow didn't quite let myself go as much as I should have done. I've regretted it since.
Above all, actually go and do it. Most people who say they want to never really do.
I'm currently trying to build myself a money making web app that will allow me to get back on the road too. Good luck :)
It was fun, but it was difficult to live cheaply and work in a quiet place.
I'm building up my programming skills and saving up 2 year's worth of money (as well as paying off any outstanding debts) before embarking on this grand adventure.
by the way of advices, I guess I can only say just keep a tight lid on your wallet; spend it only on necessities, like food, shelter, and bills.
Since I could take a very long time to save two years worth of money, I'll just save enough to get started in some low-cost country (something like 3~5 months in South America or Asia) and focus on building something that can generate some passive income.
Thanks for the advices. Stick to it, and maybe we meet on the road :)
building a webapp will probably take you longer - getting the word out can be tough, and growth can be slow. but ultimately it's more scalable - you'll be earning money (in theory) while you're out exploring your new surroundings.
some quick tips from my experience: * rent an apt with good broadband. it's worth it to be able to plug in from your home to work instead of tracking down a close, open cafe with reliable broadband. hostels are noisy.
* buy icebreaker clothing - expensive but totally worth it. they don't smell. i've had the same 5 t-shirts for the past 2.5 years. merino wool is the best fabric known to the digital nomad.
* pay off your debt before you leave. it gives you flexibility and cuts down on stress.
* don't take more than a carry-on. you can always buy stuff at your destination.
* make time to see the region of the world you're staying in. i found it hard to balance this with enjoying the city where i'm living.
* enjoy the solitude and be selfish with your time. you'll probably have no obligations to anyone when you move somewhere. relish this - ultimate control over your time is a true luxury. use it wisely (see next bullet)
* before moving somewhere, figure out what you want to do there (learn the language? meet locals? go heads-down on a webapp? see the country? etc). then focus on the things you want to do knowing you're not trying to do it all. you can always come back.
* don't forget to improvise, deviate from your schedule / goals, jump on opportunities that come up, and go with the flow.
so excited for you - you're going to have a phenomenal time! drop me a line if you have any questions - blog at reemer dot com.
I'm about to leave the East Coast to go to Stanford, and I don't want to live in a firefly-free world. I thought about trying to import them and have them breed, but apparently most species like humidity and standing water, which the Bay Area isn't too long on. I'm also not sure if they could find stuff to eat out West.
So robots are the logical solution. I realize it's going to be really hard to make something that small that's light enough to fly that blinks a light, has enough power to go for more than a few minutes, and can have the logic I'd like it to have. (In a perfect world, I'd like it to randomly roam campus for a few hours and then come back to where I launched them from.)
Also, my friend who's into robotics tells me that the US government has put a lot of money into robotic insects (for spying?) and not really gotten anywhere.
Nonetheless, someday I hope to make this happen, even if it doesn't quite have all of the features that it has in my mind.
Thank you for not doing that. The last person to have an idea like this introduced those god damn Starlings to North America. Mice came here in the same fashion (i.e. human intervention).
Would you be willing to give up the complexity of the original organism for the function you enjoy? Basically they hover there and emit a soft pulse. To get this functionality we might not need all of the extra crap in firefly anatomy, just a rough approximation.
"All we need" is to create some hovering device (a tiny helicopter) affixed to a tiny LED with an oscillating dimmer. We can make a big one first affixed to a wire and then start miniaturizing it.
If you want to try this out I'm down to help out. I miss fireflies so bad :/ Side note: I know jack shit about robotics but this sounds like a fun way to learn.
Getting that tshirt is my goal - a nice, tangible way to symbolize the massive amount of algorithmic things that I'm attempting to learn. A year ago, I couldn't solve a single problem in round 2.
Practicing for this sort of thing is a lot of fun. Programming competitions offer bite-sized questions to think about, and I believe that solving these types of questions really helps my coding style. If you don't write the best, most straightforward program to solve the problem, then you're going to run into costly bugs.
The absolute best resource for competitions - well, that I've found so far - is a little website called train.usaco.org . It gives you a ton of practice, starting out easy and growing slowly more difficult, but it always helps you along the way. It's for high school students, but don't let that trick you into thinking it's easy. It's preparation for the IOI, probably one of the hardest coding competitions in the world.
The websites topcoder.com and codeforces.com host weekly programming competitions. These are great practice as well to see how you stand and where you can improve. I signed up for both and added them to my calendar.
Topcoder also has a wealth of old problems - somewthing on the order of a few thousand. These are great for speed trials. Plus, you can check other coder's solutions to see how they solved certain things. One of the best ways to learn new tactics is to browse through the code of people who solved a problem faster than you. I've picked up some amazing tricks this way.
The uva online judge and sphere online judge have literally thousands of problems to solve. I can't say as much about them, since I haven't really delved too deeply into the problemsets on those websites yet - I've mostly stuck to usaco for now.
You'll come to value a straightforward approach over using language tricks, especially things that you don't fully understand. If you don't know exactly what your code is doing, debugging (and you will debug it if you don't understand it) becomes a nightmare.
I would recommend learning C++. As much as HN tirades against it, it's definitely the fastest language, and it's really not all that bad once you know your way around. Codeforces allows for python, but I've had problems with solutions that take too long sometimes :(
Email me at johnfn at gee mail dot com. I'm always looking for people to compete with, and I would be glad to provide hints and tricks if you run into problems :)
What are your roadblocks?
Difficult, but I assume interesting.
1) Accept the person that you are, and learn to love that person. If you don't accept who you are and love yourself, others will have a hard time following suit.
2) Do the things you love. In doing so, you're likely to meet others who share the same interests.
3) Stop worrying about whether you'll ever find someone. When you do this, you project a sense of desperation, and others can pick up on this.
Also, why the tight time frame? You don't get married to become happy, you get married because you're already happy.
On a more practical level, try OkCupid.com. Seriously, I've been so impressed with that site. If match.com is like myspace, okcupid.com is like facebook. High quality, smart people. The girls actually write you back. I'm averaging about 2 dates a month from OkCupid right now.
Also, the site is just a well designed and fun web app, so I can appreciate it on that level.
Step 1: sit back and relax ;)
A friend of mine is having a difficult time convincing his parents and hers that he has found his own partner - even though they would be very suitable candidates for an arranged marriage.
"Optimizing your wife
If a man can expect to meet exactly N eligible women in his life, what strategy should he use to maximize his chances of choosing the very best one?"
http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath018/kmath018.htm
Just curious, are you attempting to quantitatively rank the candidates in a spreadsheet, especially the intangibles like 'as potential mother'?
carry my child
Such as if you are White I suggest a good looking Indian girl who is pursuing PhD in CS or some such
My goal is to make it work. We are doing pre-marriage counseling, talking openly, pushing myself to grow, practicing patience and acceptance, and everything I can.
It is a huge challenge, but it is completely worth it.
My secondary goal is to stop working in tech and focus on my retail business (which is profitable and ready to grow).
Bottleneck: At my age and with no formal education in CS and poor academic records, getting an admission is next to impossible by conventional wisdom.
But the challenge is what makes it interesting :-).
PS: If anyone has any data/anecdotes/advice on "impossible" PhD admissions, I'd be glad to hear it (either here or my email is in the profile).
If you are really serious about this, I would say that your best bet is to start making inroads into the field by first getting a masters at a lesser school. There you would be able to demonstrate that you are capable of doing well in grad level courses, which will be a serious question mark on your application given your poor grades. If you are lucky and work hard, you may also be able to publish & network. Especially at the top schools, academia is extremely insidery and knowing people counts for more than you might expect. At least, this has been my experience, and I am trying to do something very similar in a closely-related field (math).
Last, I see it all the time that people get hung up on gaining admission to the best schools. Why Stanford? Getting to rub shoulders with the leaders of the field would, admittedly, be awesome--but you should remember that there are many less selective departments which could afford you a solid and rewarding PhD experience. In my completely un-scientific estimation, 90% of your success or failure grad will be due intrinsic factors--intelligence, work ethic, communication skills, and so forth. The other 10% will come from your surroundings. Don't get so hung up on the latter that you lose sight of the former. Or, more simply: it's possible for you to be a successful PhD student and academic without going to Stanford.
"I see it all the time that people get hung up on gaining admission to the best schools. Why Stanford? "
I am not "hung up" on it in the sense that if I don't get in that is quite all right. I have zero ego attached to any academic credentials. As you rightly point out the odds are that I'll fail and that is OK.
This is an attempted "hack" somewhat akin to climbing Everest via the hardest route possible. If the goal is just to stand on top of Everest there are better ways. There are easier routes up the mountain (like getting the Masters first from a lesser school, then going to Stanford for the PhD etc etc), but the fun (for me, I am a crazy guy) is in doing the hardest thing possible. There are other things I could do like come over on an H1 visa first then attend some classes while working at some MegaCorp, ace those, get to know some professors etc etc, but I don't want to do it that way.
I don't mind if I never get a PhD. I am not doing it to increase my self worth or career opportunities. (I have plenty of both, and the time and effort put into a PhD can probably be used to build a half dozen startups instead if money were the goal). In Computer Science anyone with a laptop, Ubuntu, a network connection and an ACM/IEEE membership can do any kind of research he wants to, though that would be a very barebones approach.
This is just a(n artificially high) bar I am trying to jump over. Jumping over a bar is intrinsically pointless. The fun is in the attempt.
I understand if people think it is a crazy idea. I just put it down here because the OP asked for "interesting" goals. Crazy ideas are often interesting!
"At the risk of discouraging you, have a look at the applicant profiles people post up on some of the grad school forum sites. "
I am not discouraged at all. I personally know very "average" people who have PhDs from MIT/Stanford. The idea that every MIT/Stanford grad is some kind of technical/research superman is a myth. There is a bell curve there, and I am confident I am not on the lower end of that curve. I don't have the right "background" to get in but I've never let that stop me from trying anything so why start now?
So sure, by conventional thinking I have next to no chance. On the other hand, a scientist I work with (who supervises several PhD's at IISc and IITs) said to me "I've never seen anyone level up as fast as you do. You understand [his specialization in Machine Learning] more deeply and have more ideas than any of my students. If you ever want to do a PhD and want a recommendation, ask me".
I plan to. ;-)
I've worked against the odds all my life (people were always telling me I couldn't do this or that) so this is very encouraging!
Thank You :-).
http://3dpancakes.typepad.com/ernie/2005/03/re_phd_with_low....
My advice is think about what you really want to do, and why you want to do it. If you want to do good research then it makes sense to apply to highly ranked PhD programs because they will give you a support system to help you learn. If you just want to own a PhD from a specific school, then it will be harder to get in, harder to finish, and less meaningful when you're done.
My advice for your specific goal is to somehow get involved with a professor's research. Preferably someone who will be recognized by admission committees. Their letter will help a lot. This might involve getting an MS at the highest-ranked school you can get admitted to. Sadly, those programs are not usually funded (as opposed to American PhD programs).
it would be easier if you had research experience in other fields and slaughtered the GRE general & subject...
but yeah stanford is not exactly hurting for applicants
Working on it (and on getting research exp) :-)
"slaughtered the GRE general & subject"
I have an almost perfect score on the GRE general (800/800 Verbal 790/800 Quant, 6/6 writing) . Taking the subject exams later this year. Not too worried about that either , but I heard these aren't of much value and research /recommendations are all that count. So I am working on those now.
Ah well you work with what you have :). Along with many brilliant dedicated people, I also see people with rather mediocre research and recommendations (but perfect academic scores etc) get in (and then not do anything particularly brilliant/drop out etc), so I suspect there might be a (small) chance. If every one who got in thoroughly outclassed me I would have no hope.
We'll see. :-)
1) Less and more than you think. Bank on at least one to two hours out of every four (that's about their sleep-wake cycle for the first couple months). Very little of it is hard if they're not sick, but the cycle is relentless.
2) Babies are very portable for the first 6 months or so b/c they're so oblivious to the world. Wake-up, change them, feed them, interact for a while, put them back to sleep for another 2 hours and they don't care what else you're doing. One parent having a full time job is easy, two is expensive and hard. Downtime is plentiful because of the frequent naps. Ditto for exercise as long as you're going one at a time while the other tends baby and unwinds.
Ironically, scheduling is much harder once the baby sleeps through the night, because at that age they're much more alert and aware during the day and therefore need a more rigid nap time routine. It gets a little better around 12-18 months when they go from two naps to one, and even better around 3-4 yrs when they drop the daytime nap and stay up all day.
In short, the only thing you can be sure of is that "your life, as you know it, is gone. Never to return."
Of course, a new born obviously requires a lot of attention (I have a 3 month old), but let them breath as they get older.
Or to put it another way, here's the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant softball team: "No one can give more than one hundred percent. By definition that is the most anyone can give..."
In time you'll get some of your life back, but it can take a while depending on the baby. It's worth it though as you'll be amazed by how much you come to love the little pup.
Since my last visit, laws have changed that require you to wear a helmet while on a moped. One of the things I enjoyed the most was the freedom in riding a moped around a huge crowded city for hours, not knowing where I was going, or where I'd end up. It's somewhat ruined now with the helmet law. Nearly 100 degree weather wearing a helmet isn't so fun.
I suggest you suck it up and wear one regardless of the heat if you either: use your head for a living, or just value your life.
Hopping on a moped and heading anywhere, parking anywhere really is quite enjoyable. It is unfortunate north american cities are not well suited to it.
The biggest problem at the moment is finding the time to train. Ideally I would like to be out everyday but I can only manage 4 days a week. Each training run is lasting upto 2.5 hours and finding that time each day is tough.
The rest is fun and massively rewarding. As I get fitter I need less sleep and I feel much stronger - both physically and mentally.
The only way to find more time to run is to sleep less which is obviously bad.
I've never tried the ice bath, ibuprofen and recovery but I've certainly had beer. Thanks for your advice.
I had an excellent teacher in Thunder Bay, but just moved to Toronto a month ago to be in a more tech savvy town (I'm a developer) and am having difficulty finding a dojang that I like and that gives attention to nurturing their lower color belts.
I understand the need to learn the basics just wondering if you found this time a drag at all or it was all interesting and I'd have nothing to worry about?
You tell them apart by their attitude toward training (patient, calm, focused) and their mastery of the basics (accurate targeting, completely relaxed body, powerful delivery).
One thing I've enjoyed in martial arts training is that taste grows faster than ability - which means that subjectively you get worse the more you practice. To compensate, training teaches you to be more patient with yourself - when we screw something up, we just do it again, there's no need to say anything or get annoyed.
Attitude is the biggest thing to focus on in the early grades (the technical stuff can only be learnt by repetition, so it's not that hard - just repeat). I don't think it's a drag at all.
Plus most classes will mix up the basics with other stuff like forms and different kinds of sparring, so you won't spend the whole time doing repetitive exercises.
I also recommend finding a school that does multiple form of martial arts. Not only can you attend a variety of classes, a lot of masters will incorporate aspects of the other martial arts into each other for a more rounded course. Right off the bat we learned basic technique, self defence moves, patterns and traditional movements such as one step sparring.
If you show an interest and find a good school, there's absolutely nothing to be worried about on the boredom front.
Roadblocks and/or bottlenecks are easy: finances. Dental work isn't cheap, especially when you're looking at as much work as I need done. The "fear" of the dentist was also an initial roadblock, but not only is it far less worse than I imagined/remembered, I also happen to have "the hots" for my female dentist so it makes going far easier.
A big step for me was finding a dentist I trusted, and just doing what he told me - letting go of the fear that he was going to completely drain me financially.
It wasn't cheap, but eventually all the required work was done, and I formed new habits that have meant no no work has been needed for several years now.
One of the most important things I did was get invisalign (braces). My teeth were really hard to keep clean before - flossing was almost impossible in some places due to the way my teeth were overlapping. Now they're straight it's really quite easy.
But I do agree, I think once I've gotten the work done, taking caring of them should be easier.
I know it looks hokey and informercially, and I was very skeptical but my father (a retired orthodontist and now an investor in the company) was insistent I try it so I said I would give it a try and see what happens at my next checkup which was a couple months away. At my next checkup my dental hygienist was really impressed with my gum health, something she never mentioned before and I didn't mention anything about the tooth brush. Same thing with my wife at her last checkup and I've heard similar from other siblings. It takes some getting used to as your gums will likely bleed some in the beginning but I think it's worth it as you don't worry about trying to hit all the spots. One other thing I've noticed since my last cleaning is that I haven't seen a buildup of calculus in certain areas that I usually got before even though I would try hard to brush and floss those areas.
1. Fixing my motivation problem. No, not that kind :-) After a lot of self-analysis I discovered I'm motivated by my desire to be "the best", and this isn't a good thing because I tend to become a little better than the #2 guy and then stop, contented. Mozart or Microsoft didn't become what they are by trying to beat the #2 guy! So I'm fixing myself to always move forward even when there's no one ahead of me.
2. Becoming a better classical-style singer. The major roadblock is that my health is very poor, and my throat always seems to be sore for some reason or other. I rectify this by taking as many lessons as I can when I'm feeling well or even moderately unwell.
3. Becoming better with women. The major roadblock right now is that I don't know how to "raise the temperature" in a casual date setting. In nightclubs where the "temperature" is high, I've taught myself to pick up women pretty consistently, but this doesn't seem to be enough.
4. Releasing a neat piece of software that I've been developing in the last couple months. It's already pretty good and will probably make a bigger splash than my last "fun" project (http://openphotovr.org) did, but the finishing bits just take so much time. Don't worry HN, I'll keep you posted.
5. Solving math problems in and around "computational game theory". My previous "neat" results were about quining cooperation (http://lesswrong.com/lw/do/reformalizing_pd/ and http://lesswrong.com/lw/13y/freaky_fairness/), and recently I've been trying to solve a similar problem in a more abstract setting. Not getting much results yet; so far it looks like a blank wall and I keep trying different directions of attack.
4: You're probably trying to make it too perfect before you launch. Pick a date that seems a little too close, and resolve to submit it to HN by that date no matter what. If you end up pushing half of those "finishing bits" to after launch, whatever. It's quite possible that no one on HN will say that it should have one of those finishing bits, which probably means you can cross it off the list.
I was a really bad steward for the first half a year, due to crushing lack of assistance and being really demoralized. Lately, I've managed to turn that around, and am currently crushing it pretty hard. 1.0 for Whyday, and then more beyond... things are looking up, but it's a long hard road ahead.
Current bottleneck: no time right now to dedicate to it. I just satisfy race longings now thru occasionally karting and flying around the backroads here in NC.
Roadblock: balls keep falling.
EDIT: current status (as of yesterday): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lsuO0tQZaU
Perhaps a powerful fan pointed upward could slow them down a bit.
Problem: Worst case, my savings only last until December.
Solution: Splatter "hire me" over apps, portfolio site and keep an eye out for freelance work to retain a reasonable life-support margin.
Problem: May not find freelance work due to bad luck, recession, incompetence etc.
Solution: Apply for distance courses and do 25-50% studies for student funding.
Problem: May over invest in a horrible idea that is never going to make money.
Solution: Aim to build small apps.
Problem: Completely ran out of money, with no obvious way of getting new ones.
Solution: Credit card should get me a few months margins.
Problem: Completely ran out of credit, with no obvious way of supporting myself.
Solution: Admit incompetence, feel ashamed, move back to comfortable Sweden and work at Volvo or Ericsson until retirement like everyone else.
Problem: Pretty Asian girls.
Solution: Don't.
Biggest bottleneck is clearly money, and I'd really prefer not be studying at the same time. I'm also going to be staying with friends, so that'll keep my burn rate down.
Roadblocks (the ones I think are the biggest anyway):
Supply Chain. Probably going to first need a way to or supplier who can mine and process materials from somewhere other than Earth.
Infrastructure. Definitely going to need some sort of factory in space in which this operation can be done.
Knowledge. I don't know anything about manufacturing in space. There's some research in the area, but my guess is that the knowledge base just doesn't exist.
edit: formatting
While not insurmountable, the current situation seems to be "I want to build space-based solar panels. I don't know anything about building them, I have no way to get the materials, and no way to turn the materials into the product once I do." Can I ask, given that, what led you to want to do this in the first place?
Is the idea here to beam the power back in microwave form? I would add another hurdle, if so: Regulatory approval. You can't just aim a microwave laser at the surface of the Earth from space without anyone noticing or caring.
This certainly is an interesting aspiration, though.
Beaming power back is certainly one application, but not the one I had in mind. I was thinking these would be used to power things in space. The vast majority of electrical power used by stuff like satellites and space stations comes from solar power. Total mass, electrical power, and fuel are the major constraints in all of these systems. If there was a readily available source of solar arrays in space, then that could effectively remove that constraint, and relax the constraints on mass and fuel (since you don't have to bring the solar panels with you).
Now, why would I want to do that? I'm one of those people that not only dreamed about going into space, but also assumed that the future of humanity was not on Earth, but out there. For that to happen, we need to be able to expand into the solar system, which just isn't going to happen if we need to move all of the materials we need out of Earth's gravity well.
Finally, what have I done? To be honest, it probably isn't going to sound like much. I'm open to suggestions. Obviously, it's going to take a lot of money. Most of what I've done has been focused on being able to make a credible case to get funding. I'm working on my PhD, which builds my credentials. I network with other students in the field because it's going to take more than one person.
In terms of actual pen to paper, I decided to work on the supply chain problem first. I'm working on calculations for what it would take to send a mission to an asteroid and bring the whole thing back as a possible scenario.
It will probably take 20 years and a billion dollars - but both seem miniscule if the project is successful.
Current road blocks: finding time to build, finding a site without NIMBY neighbours, planning permission (grrr)
Mostly what I've looked at so far are cob/straw houses. With these you are basically looking at a rubble/concrete base (which you can hopefully scavenge for free), clay/straw/sand for making the cob, and wood for the roof/window/doorframes etc. The best budget option for a roof seems to be turf, although that cuts down on the amount of rain water you could collect if you wanted to independant from a water company.
The biggest obstacle in the UK seems to be finding suitable land and getting planning permission etc. I don't really know any solution to that.
Over the past few weeks I've been reading 'building with cob: a step by step guide" which covers both the technical and legal aspects of building one of these structures in the UK. It's a great book.
I'd love to do this too but I'm overwhelmed by thousands of questions.
* Time. Or if time = money then I need money to be able to spend time on this. Also, in itself this wouldn't bring in much income I don't think.
* No CS background. Don't know where to start.
1) Natural Language Understanding - James Allen 2) Speech and Natural Language Processing - Jurafsky & Martin 3) Statistical Foundations of Natural Language Processing - Manning
You can brush up your probability and Linear Algebra from the prep guides available from Andrew Ng's machine learning course. My best wishes.
Now I'm not sure the best way to go about this, either learn the abstract concepts which might not be the best way to start or pickup one of the more pure languages which in turn will teach you concepts when you learn how they are implemented in the language.
Road Block(s): No packaged trips to do this, no network with marine biologists/researchers who own the subs
and i usually stay the night. 2 or 3 times that i've been there, i see massive bioluminecents in the water. not sure exacly what causes it. but in the middle of the night ill go into the ocean and spash and its the brightest purple you've ever seen. like when you hit the water it 'activates' something and explodes with color.
anyway. i do have the internet right here. should probably look that up. its amazing.
Current roadblock is that I'm just not doing it enough. I get distracted by other interests of mine. I was previously practising 3 times a week (which probably still isn't enough) but lately I'm only going once a week.
Please read this article by the Unlikely Salsero:
http://www.unlikelysalsero.com/2007/08/magic-of-time-last-on...
The whole idea of going from canned set routines to dancing to the music is a bit of difficult hack that I'm still working on (but making progress). The hack for that I think is understand the structure of the song - (real-time Fourier analysis of a set of eight measures of 8-beats each..with your feet)
Here I am, years later, vastly more knowledgeable than I ever have been, yet code dumb. I have a few things I would like to develop solutions for, and Java seemed to fit my needs. I started on the "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist" book and I've enjoyed it, but I'm starting to feel that maybe Java isn't the solution I am looking for.
A few solutions I would like to have implemented quickly and I am heavily considering refreshing my limited knowledge of VB and cracking out some hack code.
I'm torn right now. Learn a new multi-platform language and proper coding practices or just settle for some Windows only solutions that I could complete in a vastly shorter period of time.
edit: spelling
tl;dr - write code again (learn a language)
Just an idea...
My short-term track/running/fitness goals: Break 4 minutes for 1500m, 2:00 for 800m. Currently at 4:06 and 2:00.1 (the latter is so heartbreaking!). Squat 250lbs (currently at 185, weighing 138).
Educational goals: 4 publications in the next two years, complete PhD (CS). Get a solid grasp on differential calculus. Truly understand relativity and quantum mechanics.
Any advice from people who've tackled any of the above is welcome. Thanks.
Note: that last one won't get you into really interesting bits like the interpretation* of quantum mechanics, but I think you need to have a thorough understanding of the mathematics before you tackle the philosophical issues.
There's nothing to it really: squat heavy 2-3 times a week, increase the weight regularly in tiny increments, get plenty of rest, and eat lots of protein. If you're overtraining, drop back to 1-2 times a week.
Weight training is fun because results are directly correlated to how hard you work at it!
Have you read "Once a Runnner" by John L. Parker? It just got reprinted in paperback.
look into crossfit[crossfit.com] workouts if you haven't already.
Early on you put the child on the potty when they have a high likelihood of needing to pee/poop. You keep a potty nearby, put them on it 10 times a day and make it fun: read books while they sit on it. He learned to associate peeing/pooping with the potty very quickly. After 3 months or so he will now generally wait for the potty. He has his little routine and my wife knows the general times he needs to go and puts him on the pot. He only uses a diaper when in the car or sometimes at night.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that EC/Diaper Free Baby suggest the reason babies commonly pee on you when you remove their diaper is that it goes against their instinct to soil themselves in their diaper. When you remove it, its time to go! The argument is that a baby who is afforded the opportunity to learn to use the potty quickly will be happier. My son is very happy to use the pot. In fact he is sitting on it right now :)
But, I think the best thing we did that actually worked---which we always had been reluctant to trying---was to leave him running around the house butt-naked. The whole apartment has carpet.
Fun times.
The biggest roadblock for me so far is just having time to execute on it. I have friends who have published books through ORA, so I'm not too concerned about getting proper introductions to people in the tech publishing world; I just don't know if I have the time to sit down and bang out 200 pages of quality material.
It's a world-wide one-month novel writing sprint, meant to solve the "one day" novel problem ("One day, I'll write a novel"). Though the focus is on novel writing, there's nothing to stop you from working on a non-fiction book.
The in-person write-ins, online community available for short word-count sprints, and other community-momentum / encouragement benefits can be a huge help to anyone who "wants" to find the time to write, but somehow hasn't yet been able to. Single moms with a job succeed at this. You can too!
> I just don't know if I have the time to sit down and bang out 200 pages of quality material.
You can write two pages a day in the morning before work, no problem, very doable. Do that for three months. BAM, book is done. Don't think about the 200 pages, think about the 2 pages. Do the 2 pages. Repeat.
My general plan goes like this:
2010: Write a book.
2011: Write a good book.
That way I hope to develop the habits required to write huge chunks of material before solving the much harder problem of writing material that doesn't suck.
Roadblocks: Lack of self-discipline and commitment (day job providing good money)
One thing I'm starting to do, since I also have a day job, is going to the library for my lunch break (I eat lunch real fast right before I go) which is luckily a few blocks away, with and laptop loaded with Ubuntu to force myself to do some more lisping.
Once I get in the habit I'll be able to work on harder challenges and hopefully become a better programmer.
Also, it might seem that your lack of discipline and commitment comes from complacency due to the day job, but in my case, after being laid-off, I found myself procrastinating just as much (I got all day now right?) so be careful about making any sudden moves in that area.
Goal: Launch a non-profit student apprenticeship program in partnership with a few corporations.
Roadblock #1: While doing my 9-7 job.
Roadblock #2: A few of my web applications are finally reaching the "need to incorporate" stage. Have very little clue about law and accounting.
Roadblock #3: Have some of the clients/partnerships down, but getting the right students and professionals involved is difficult.
http://duriansoftware.com/joe/An-intro-to-modern-OpenGL.-Tab...
Also:
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596804831
And then personally I've found this to be the clearest theory:
http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice-...
Bottleneck: My boring day job, which is needed because I have a family to support.
Roadblocks: they keep selling them...
If someone else is planning the same, the tips at whyquit.com helped me.
I didn't think it would work, originally, and bought it figuring that for $8, if I just skipped one pack of cigarettes it would've paid for itself. So far, I've gotten a roughly ~400x return on it (1 pack Marlboro Reds/day).
Another aspect I guess is to get more involved in the Melbourne startup/ coworking community, only had limited contact thus far in what seems to be quiet a large and vibrant scene.
My old roommate spent a few weeks hitching around Japan and loved it. He had no trouble at all, and the people were all really nice.
You might want to read Hokkaido Highway Blues if you haven't yet.
Roadblock: Day has 24 hours. Need 27.
I blew past the JLPT 2 last year, so this year it's just a matter of finding the time to work on it every day.
Would list my marathon training, but that's too popular as-is. ;p Farthest run has been ten miles so far; I'll get there...
A lot of deserving folks without an online voice struggle to put the word out when in need (An urgent need for blood, a sudden need for funds for a critical operation). I'm thinking we can tap into influentials to help spread the word (who can earn karma in return).
Bottleneck: As step 1 in this project, I've launched http://www.saveaplusk.org , but ironically it's suffering from the very same problem I want to solve - I have too small a voice to get the word out.
Whatever size voice you might have, it is louder when you use it locally. Are you and your friends using it to help people? Are the people then helped not willing to try it?
I can’t see your site from my current location but with local and modest goals you might be surprised who the influentials are and what karma they might really want.
1. Budget. I know it sucks, and I know it is a hassle, still, no way around it. Grab excel or numbers or openOffice and do it start of each month.
2. Split accounts I have used this technique to great success. - 1st account is the "INCOMING" account, This is where all incoming money goes to and all fixed costs (see 1. Budget) go away from. - 2nd account is a "pocket money" account. Pocket money is transferred there. Nice about this: You can spend ALL of this and your bills and food are still paid. - 3rd account is a savings account. Not much to explain here. Make sure to save a good amount.
3. Keep at it
4. Get a seperate wallet for "food and household". I usually get a laugh about this, as it was something our parents used to do. Still, I withdraw cash beginning of the month and pay my groceries from this. Works wonders.
5. Keep at it
6. Use a big chunk from your savings account to remove all remaining debt at once.
7. Enjoy freedom.
I know people will go on about "credit history", "credit rating", etc... However, I plan to nev er go there again.
Best, ::captaink::
The other practice I want to get in the habit of is telling my self that I can only spend money if I have earned it from doing extra work, be it web design, cutting a hedge etc. That should motivate me to get out and about to earn extra on the side.
Its going to be very tough thats for sure, then again some of the happiest times of my life have been when ive been broke.
Roadblock: probably not a scientifically viable proposition, given space debris and lack of ability to build something that large/durable. Solution: write a sci-fi short story with this as a plot element, and call it good.
Tesla Roadster
help a loved one to get cured of a horrible health problem
not necessarily in that order, and not necessarily interesting to others, but they are among my top goals right now
Roadblocks: Most books don't exist in ebook form, I don't have an ebook reader, printed books cannot be ripped to disk as easily as CD's and DVD's. I have sentimental attachments to too many items. It seems wasteful to throw away valuable items, but selling them is a hassle.
Roadblocks: Being willing to put myself in feared situations long enough to acclimate to them. I know exposure works for me but it's still very hard as the next goal always seems to be the impossible one. I've been having some success in combining mindfulness techniques with the exposure practice.
1.) Try setting a goal with someone else, it doesn't have to be the same goal between you, you both basically have to spot eachother and make sure one another do what they require themselves to do. That said you could do both goals together doubling your experiences.
2.) I have a fear of heights too. However, the way I've tackled it was with indoor rock climbing, which transfered to outdoor freeclimbing, and once I lose the weight, skydiving next year.
My biggest roadblock is that I'm broke. I haven't really started on this goal in earnest yet. My intention is to finish my PhD by the end of the year and then freelance for a while to earn enough money for lessons and boat.
My primary roadblock there is trying to decide what tech I want to pick up. Ruby and Rails are appealing, Python looks interesting, and I wonder if I shouldn't be looking at some new stuff like Clojure or node.js as well. I also wonder if I shouldn't get into some of the evented frameworks like Tornado or EventMachine. This has always been my problem -- I'm interested in too many aspects of technology and there's just no time to pursue them all.
My secondary roadblock, once I decide on a tech, is getting some good documentation and perhaps some mentoring on it. Some of those frameworks seem to be pretty lacking in good documentation and examples.
Her situation is the biggest roadblock - she didn't graduate from college (a big strike in the DHS's eyes) and has been self-employed as an esthetician for most of her career.
While she'd be open to working for someone else in the US, getting a visa for her will be tough without the college degree. And her preference is not to work for someone else so she can continue to run her practice while starting a skincare product line biz.
"Satisfied with my lot" is probably a better term. Life is excellent except for the 5% of my brain that sees the bleak side of everything.
The main roadblock is the common depression / bipolar type II episodes.
Roadblocks: Myself, more than anything. So hard to work on something a. so big, and b. in spare time when I so often feel like chilling out!
I am trying to move from pure coding to a job that combines coding with traveling and dealing directly with technical stakeholders. It seems in most companies the people who are responsible for the latter do very little, if any, of the former.
Figure I will put another 1-3 years trying to find this position at an existing company, and if that doesn't pan out, I'll just start my own company designed around letting me do exactly that. :)
I was a consultant working on Business Intelligence and found a niche in automating rights management.
After a couple of years the travel got old (and there were some not fun projects in there too).
It takes like 5-10M in capital to make 10k/mo "safely" on a long term basis now, which rules out an investment-only strategy for almost everybody.
Roadblocks: Psychological.
Bottlenecks: A boring regular job (partial financial independence) is an easier option.
Partner with a certain local government agency to make a major user-facing improvement. (next 2 years)
Start a school using an the updated version of the monitorial/lancasterian system of education. (next 20 years)
Life 1: live with less (stuff)
Life 2: meet a girl
As far as progress... I've started on Summer's, but I'm not as far as I hoped. Currently working on SICP. Life 1 is actually progressing, as very often I find things that I can get rid of and not miss. Life 2... not yet..
Roadblocks are the back log to even talk to a recruiter, and the extremely long and thorough application process. Someone help!
Bottleneck: have two kids at once, and gain some 2 years (time between first and second kid)
Currently I am learning Python and Django and waiting for the Drupal 7 release to create a project. I hope it makes enough money that I can relocate to somewhere in Scandinavia preferably Finland.
ROADBLOCK: honing in on a subject. I can only submit one proposal (which is due tomorrow), or, hope to get picked for someone else's panel. Here are potential panel ideas:
- Website Optimization Basics: I wrote a post a few months back that was popular on HN, about how I reduced page load time by 75% (http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/wordpress-optimization-drea...). I would boil down the technical jargon to simple language. It would be a dual presentation with the engineer that gave me most of the advice I used.
- Reverse-Engineering Visual Design: I would explain some of the classic principles and methods that designers use to make the decisions they do when designing for the web. I presented on this at BarCamp Chicago a couple of years ago (http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/design-for-the-coders-mind-...), so I have something to start with, but it still needs more juice.
- Everything You Already Know About SEO: the basics of SEO are stupidly simple, and widely known, but there are many misconceptions and unknowns. I would condense and explain all of the best practices and things that we do know about SEO, and how to use them to grow your business.
- How to Get a Date Online: I have an alter-ego through which I give online dating tips (http://onlinedatingmatchmaker.com). I would talk about how to best represent the interesting aspects about yourself, present communication techniques for opening with matches and securing dates, and present data from studies that suggest provocative things, such as why you should lie on your online dating profile (http://www.onlinedatingmatchmaker.com/lie-online-dating-prof...). I actually got a personal message from Hugh Forrest only minutes after submitting this presentation idea last year - about how much he liked the idea - but I guess it didn't make it through the selection process.
Another ROADBLOCK is my relative lack of speaking experience. I find it hard to get motivated about smaller speaking opportunities like BarCamp or Peca Kucha, so I'm not sure where to find mid-level speaking opps to hone my chops.
A BOTTLENECK is my relative lack of notoriety, or having a "thing." As you can see a variety of topics interest me, but I can't yet be thought of as "the four-hour workweek guy" or "the personal finance guy"
Any advice, or opinions on which panel I should propose, would be appreciated! Thanks - I love this thread!
Optimization and SEO are nice, but if you don't have a solid design they're not that useful.
Roadblocks: Human nature. But grace overcomes that.
Roadblock: There are no job opportunities for a software developer in that area.
Sky's the limit, right?
...oops, I posted, guess every goal has some setbacks.
Bonus: My NDA
I was just at a friend's wedding last weekend, am engaged myself, and four other friend pairs are also engaged. In all of these cases, we discussed marriage extensively with our partners before anyone was officially asked. We all knew what the answer was going to be.
If you want to consider going to the next step, you should bring up marriage casually in conversation. If she sounds like she's just not into it, she's either going to say no, or say yes because of pressure when she doesn't really mean it.
I recently asked my very excellent girlfriend of 5 years said question. I procrastinated so long at least partially due to residual trauma from an early parental divorce (plus the subsequent decades of court battles and screaming).
My fiancee's approach was a combination of patience and understanding for 4 years, then basically telling me my time was up. The latter strategy wouldn't have worked without the former.
One thing I'm certainly glad we did is to talk about it honestly and deeply before taking the plunge. I doubt I would have been able to work up the courage to do it otherwise.
If marriage is important to you, tell her so, and give you reasons why.
Bottlenecks: My empathy is ridiculed by the way I live. I believe I can make more of a difference in a position of power then if I just move somewhere and work as a volunteer for the rest of my life. Though to get to power I have to live in this world which I hate.
Bottleneck: Lack of discipline, perhaps also lack of life experience to make it truly meaningful and classic and maybe also lack of other softer skills such as how to convey in writing different accents or manners of speaking of different people.
Have you heard of Nanowrimo? http://www.nanowrimo.org/ People get together and write an entire novel over November (50,000 words). I have actually done it twice.
You're probably thinking of saying something like "how can you ever write a good novel in just a month?" The point of Nanowrimo, though, is to get you to ignore your internal critic.
The reason that everyone wants to write a novel, but people rarely get too far (and I can see this in your comment) is because people are too concerned with writing the best possible novel they can write, and let down when it doesn't come out that way. This is why people run into writer's block: they endlessly self-criticize, and they can't sneak out a word past their highly critical self.
Do Nanowrimo. Write the worst novel in the world, if that's what it takes. But you need to get rid of your internal critic. Or at least silence him until the editing stage. Then he can come out and go on a rampage. But he is useless when you are trying to brainstorm. You'll never get anywhere if you set out to make a meaningful, classic book.
It's a world-wide one-month novel writing sprint, meant to solve the "one day" novel problem ("One day, I'll write a novel"). The in-person write-ins, online community available for short word-count sprints, and other community-momentum / encouragement benefits can be a huge help to anyone who "wants" to find the time to write, but somehow hasn't yet been able to.
Their forums are filled with great advice on how to improve dialogue, convey more realistic characters, etc.
I also get to go through the same drill with Locksport International (http://www.locksport.com). In fact, visit the Lockpicking Village at The Next HOPE and DEFCON, or Security Snobs (http://www.securitysnobs.com) and buy some lockpicks or t-shirts to help your fellow hackers!
2) Write a few philosophical fiction books
3) Run a Micro ISV while I'm writing those books :)
I guess none of these are unique to us all here, but they're my current life goals.