The best things and stuff of 2011 by Fogus
blog.fogus.me
blog.fogus.me
On a serious note, that is an excellent selection of papers and books - Thanks fogus. You have me very inspired for 2012. Now, on to get some reading done.
It's just that after reading a post like that, it makes me think that I need a little bit more focus. I get attracted to new shiny things, but I still have a day job - which means that outside of shifting contexts a lot, I also shift my focus a lot.
A post like this makes me think that perhaps I need to dedicate a considerable amount of time to learning something new (Clojure in my case) and sticking with it.
And to answer your question, I did accomplish quite a lot this year (in my own little way). And I did enjoy it. Thank you.
I do like to relax and do nothing so it is probably that ;-)
Also there was an article recently about "elite" archivers as they called them, pianists and violinists that achieved more while putting in the same hours as their peers because they kept pushing their boundaries and had two well defined practice sessions each day. It also meant they felt more relaxed during the rest of the day.
I still read. But I made a decision not to read too much like I used to in the past. In the past, I used to read tons of books an do less. The problem with that is that I only absorb 10%-20% of the books and simply forgot the rest. My workflow was probably as follow: read book, done, tinkering for a day or two before starting to read another book. Repeat the cycle. (Doesn't matter what book it is; productivity, technology, etc).
I also change my perspective on which books I should read. Gone are the days where I get easily excited when someone said "hey, this book is a must-read for developers/entrepreneurs". Only to find out that there's another book written in the 70's, 80's, or 90's with less pages, boring title, and colorful cover that explain things in a much better, simplified, and to the point.
Hence my statement of "not to waste too much time to just read".
I mean, that sounds glib, but a lot of the Unix toolchain involves text: searching it, typesetting it, (automatically) editing it, and so on. You can use make to automate static HTML generation from a tree of Markdown files, for example.
vi lacks the "persistent, integrated environment" aspect of Emacs, which is what sustains tools like org-mode. vim can edit multiple files, have multiple windows, and the like, but it wasn't a fundamental design principle. You may be better off using a couple simple scripts and using vi(m) where it shines: editing text.