liljimmytables

When I was a young kid, I remember that we used to ask each other "what's your favourite color?" a lot. At the time, this question used to panic me. I mean, red's pretty neat, but then so's blue. Yellow's nice, and so on. It's only with the benefit of hindsight that one sees that it's an artificially narrow question. A child would make that mistake, but not an adult, right?

Well, that's how I see the "do what you love," argument manifesting here. The things that define your true passions aren't going to be the dreams that you dreamed as a child, or as a teenager. You are always developing as an individual, and the things that you love are capable of redefining themselves. One thing that I hear time and time again is that "X" is fun until you have to do it for a living; that's not doing what you love, that's clinging to a bad mistake. You can do what you love by finding something you enjoy and by applying love, there's no mystical "true love" of careers that is imposed from on high.

Hmm, what I just wrote was properly glib, wasn't it?

I've been exploring the 4hww lifestyle business thing for a bit now, and it's always nice to read the other side of the argument. However, in this case I can't help but feel that anyone who's churning away at a blog or ebook that no-one cares about, has missed the core of the strategy. I'm pretty sure Monsieur Ferris himself says that you should test the market by getting cash commitment before embarking on a big project. I've not got the book to hand so correct me if i'm wrong, but i recall something about making experimental ebay auctions which you cancel at the last minute, and so forth. If you can't prove your market with real money, abandon that particular ship and find another. Regardless of how you plan to run a product-selling business, that seems like good sense to me. If you've poured hours into your ebook without checking to see that there are buyers at that price, you've dug your own grave.

Get back to work!

I don't really consider myself an expert on getting things done, but I will suggest one thing. Take a day off every week. A day off the internet, a day off anything with a screen, and a day off anything which is about paid work. When you sit at your computer and think "maybe just a few more rage comics[1]" you're actually feeling a bit uninspired. sitting and staring at your computer is the worst way to achieve inspiration. instead, do the housework, bake, take up a hardware project, knit, read, do a correspondence course. anything that is unimportant to your day job, and pleasant, and nothing to do with those computerboxes.

When my day off is over I go back to my myriad projects and sit down and actually do them. It's much much much more productive than trying to work all the time. I actually suspect this is one of the major advantages of the sabbath in Abrahamic religions.

Oh, and use bookmarks. The blogosphere is much easier to forget about when you know you can find all the good stuff at a later date.

Like I say I'm no expert, but this helps me. I find that when I try to break the trend and work all week my mind quickly devolves into that of a dullard drone.

Best of luck breaking that habit!

[1] don't judge me :(

You don't even need to root it, just one tweak to your settings and you can download an apk from anywhere you like. If you get your apks this way they aren't market-managed and have no magic kill switch.

Market isn't so much a walled garden but a preferred vendor, in the same way that a Debian repository is.

As a great fan of latex, I would LOVE to use it to format my CV. But here in Britain there are far too many HR departments and agencies who will look at your pdf and say "I'm sorry, could you send the original Word doc?"

Not that recruiters are always the best way to get a job, but it would be silly to write them out of my searches

I remember as a student, years ago, writing a little hobby OS for my PC and thinking of the assembly language "and this is the most popular architecture? Ye gods." It was just so arcane compared to the MIPS we'd been taught in class. I don't know if the situation has improved over the (10 or so) years, but I think that student-me would be pleased at the emergence of a common platform with a RISC architecture.

Sent from my Dell Streak. Hey young Jimmy! Dell have made a RISC box. It's a bit smaller than that Ultra 1 though...

Boring, obvious advice from someone who's been using Kubuntu since Feisty: if it's your main desktop, don't upgrade now unless you have to. For the sake of a couple of weeks' waiting you stand a much better chance of avoiding any teething troubles, or at least being able to to find documentation for your problem. This is especially relevant if you use a laptop or unusual hardware.

(For the record I've been hit with laptop wifi incompatibility (the Intel wireless driver got changed, config files didn't update) and software RAID in the GRUB 2 update.)

"What is the right price for some of the items you value?" This question has changed its meaning for me in recent months, as I'm saving up to fund some {pre-,}incubation work in the new year. Ordinary things like "a shiny new phone" through to "getting the roof fixed" are now being framed in terms of a week's work at minimum wage. So far there have been very few things as important as a week's work, and as a result the things I love are being fulfilled in slightly strange ways. I now know a whole load about quality homebrewing. My music collection is filling out with all the albums I never got around to buying in my teens (thank you, charity shops). And buying new gadgets has been replaced with writing a few apps and revving the firmware. It's made me more aware that I don't really want _that_ book or _that_ device, but that I will be content with anything that stimulates me and makes me feel richer in the areas I care about. And on the whole, "you could do a week's work for that" has been the perfect whip to keep my tech covetousness at bay.

If this post reads smug or pious it wasn't my intention, you can bet I will be right off the wagon as soon as the new project is up and running...

I actually wrote a scathing reply to this, complaining that he'd seen a film, not enjoyed it, and rationalised his experience. Big logic fail. Who is he to say that having lots of exposition is not enjoyable? I enjoyed it. Sure, he's obviously got a bit of understanding about a subject and he's put it to good use in manipulating other people's thoughts, but that's just wrong.

Then I realised I was getting upset about a blog entry, and thought: wait, no. This is how the internet works. People post their opinions on blogs, like-minded people (of which I am clearly not one in this case) will enjoy sharing with them. The fellow has opened my mind to another way of interpreting a story, another angle from which I can appreciate the work. And maybe by understanding his opinion I can reflect better on my own enjoyment.

Then I thought a little harder. No, the internet works by ignorant people ranting against each other until they achieve a state of mutual indignation which overrides any basic logical thoughts they might have possibly had about the situation. It was at this point I wished I had not deleted my original post. Sorry internet, I have failed you.

It depends on the language. Things like assembler demand Nine Inch Nails, Atari Teenage Riot, and other really fast things. This is possibly due to the fact that I have the attention span of a whippet, and I need to be kept up to speed. C++ lends itself to distorted acid noise in the manner of mu-Ziq, LFO, Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. Possibly because this music is good at dispelling C++ induced rage. Java is pleasant to write with a bit of big band like Nina Simone or Fred Astaire (this is probably more to do with the fact that I was into that sort of stuff when I first learned Java than because there might be any relation between Java and big band). Other languages on request :)

On a similar note, does anyone else have a favourite drink for late-night hacking? Again, Java is quite red-winey. Assembler is vodka and mixer. Electronics work demands a good ale.

Hello HN. delurk