The folks at Vox have put together this: 26 charts and maps that show the world is getting much, much better.
One of my favourite statistics/charts is this one:
Even hardcore pessimists have a difficult time with that one. 🙂
The other 25 charts are worth checking out. They highlight significant areas where life is getting better. If you need a reason to be optimistic or to be more optimistic (or to be less pessimistic), you owe it to yourself to see the Vox post and then think about it.
There are quite a few really good introductions to git. I’ve written about them here. Once you get past “git 101”, where do you go to learn more and be more productive with git? I’d like to recommend this article:
developerWorks: Learn the workings of Git, not just the commands. It should help you get to the next level. I particularly like the diagrams: there are alot of them, and they help you better understand the flow that can occur when you really start capitalizing on git.
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Posted in advice, developerWorks, IBM, IT, software
Tagged advice, developerWorks, git, ibm, software, sourcecontrol, subversion, SVC
It has always struck me as wrong, when I read something along these lines:
It is a tragedy that Mr or Ms X died, but..
If it has you feeling the same way, I recommend you read this: BUT | Snakes and Ladders.
If I have sympathy for someone who has died, I express that. If I don’t, I hold my tongue until a more suitable time.
I used to feel the urge to write posts whenever the New York Times did an article on something that was centered around IT, because they would get so much wrong. It isn’tt just something that happens occasionally either: it seems to happen often. That’s why you should be wary of tech pieces in the Times.
Case in point, the story about Sony being hacked. For this story, someone has done the work for me: Anatomy of a NYT Piece on the Sony Hack and Attribution | Curmudgeonly Ways. I recommend this piece.
I would warn you to be careful in coming to any conclusions about a matter related to IT based on what you read there.
It is easy to think of Kickstarter as mainly a platform for massive projects. One example of that is the insane success of the recent Kickstarter project, Exploding Kittens (it raised the money it needed in 20 minutes and now is raking in millions of dollars), but it is only one example of many over the last few years. I started to associate Kickstarter solely with such projects.
But Kickstarter is for lots and lots of people, many of them raising modest sums to do something worthwhile but on a much much smaller scale than “Kittens”. A good example of that is this project, Naked by Betty — Kickstarter.
The project is “A series of (self portrait) photographs capturing the beauty of the human body beneath the skin.” (The image above is from the project description.) The artist was looking to raise $680 to pay for material needed to complete the work. It’s a reasonable amount, and the ability for projects like this to be successful is what made Kickstarter great to me.
I highly recommend this project. (I also backed it.) And there are lots and lots of projects like that out there. I recommend you look past the high profile projects on Kickstarter and other such sites and look to the smaller projects instead. You (as a project sponsor) and the project owners will both benefit.
The folks at Buffer have put together a very big list of 100 tools, tips and tricks to work more efficiently online. I have gone over it and there are lots and lots of good tools and tips and other advice to help you be more productive and get the most out of being online. Stop wasting time on social media** and start being more productive by clicking on that link now.
** Reading this blog does not count as wasting time on social media. 🙂
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Posted in advice, productivity
Tagged advice, online, productivity, tips, tools
The folks at this site have a number of tools to help with stress, including this: Equanimity Project: Online Meditation Timer.
If you can sit quietly at your desk for awhile, it may just be the thing to help you calm your mind and get back to a more peaceful state before you proceed with your day.
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Posted in advice
Tagged meditate, meditation, software, tools
It’s Wednesday. You are feeling stressed. Maybe you should go out on your lunch break and get some crayons and do some art work. According to this,
Coloring ….Can Actually Help Adults Combat Stress.
And if you think, “who does that?”, you should know that in France, the UK and Spain, coloring books for adults are very popular.
There are worse ways to deal with stress than adding some color to a blank book. Might be worth a try.
We come into a lot of criticism in the course of our lives. Just on social media alone there is a lot. Some of it is directed at you, while other criticism comes at you indirectly. Some of it comes from people you like, while other critiques will come from people you barely know. You can be criticized for the things you say, the things you do, even for who you are: a man, a woman, a person of a certain race or financial class or nationality. Pick a trait you have and nowadays you can find someone saying something critical about it.
Given that you do have to deal with a lot of criticism, you can do take a number of actions. It’s not advisable, but you can run away from it. (For example, giving up on certain forms of social media, like twitter.) You can get into arguments with people. This seems like a good idea, but I often find it frustrating, endless, alienating, and the opposite of how you may want to be. You can learn to ignore it, though learning to ignore it is not always easy. Sometimes the criticism is invalid or worse, then it’s easy to ignore. But some of the criticism is valid and when that happens, it can get under your skin. It’s great if you are thick skinned, but if you are not, you need to do something else. You need to learn to manage criticism.
One approach to managing criticism is to use understand the idea of a license to criticize. This borrows from the famous Eleanor Roosevelt quote: no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. The idea of a license to criticize is that you should only accept criticism from a small group of people, regardless of how many valid and invalid criticisms you come across. A license is different from a right. As an adult, no one has a right to criticize you: you give them that ability. Even when you do give them the ability to criticize you, it is a privilege or license. It is a license you are free to provide or revoke. They do not own it, and you get to say when they can or can’t use it. You should treat that license as valuable, and you should only give it to people whose criticism is going to result in you and your life being better as a result of their criticism.
In your life you will want to accept criticism. Accepting criticism from people you respect and who have an interest in seeing you succeed makes sense. You become a better person and enjoy a better life from such criticism. Accepting criticism from people you don’t respect and who have no interest in seeing you succeed makes no sense. That type of criticism just makes you miserable and ruins your life.
The next time you are offered criticism, ask yourself:
If you answer Yes to those questions, then you will likely want to accept and act on that criticism. Otherwise it is in your best interest to ignore it and look for someone who can make you answer Yes to those questions.
Finally, the number of people you should give license to criticize you should be a very small number of people. It should not be something given out to just anyone you know, never mind just anyone on the Internet.
If you are going to be running in cold weather, having a warm up to get you started will help. Here’s a good one to try: Winter Prep Workout from Runner’s World.
It typically takes 5-10 minutes to warm up when you go running. (Some people can take much longer). During those few minutes, I found I am cold and sometimes miserable. This warm up can help reduce the misery of winter running and also help you from getting injured.
Anything that makes winter running easier is worthwhile.
In this otherwise really good piece by Ed Keenan – Six things we learned from John Tory’s transit announcement: Keenan | Toronto Star – he made this comment
At a new price of $141.50, a Metropass costs almost as much as 51 tokens or 47 cash fares. For most weekday commuters, that math doesn’t add up.
At first thought, this seemed right to me. If you only use the Metropass to go to and from one location each business day, it isn’t worth it. For example, assuming most months have 22 working days, then that is 44 tokens, which is less than the 51 tokens it is worth.
Where the Metropass math adds up is when you start to be a heavier use of the TTC.
If you travel on the TTC daily, then you can get in as many as 62 trips/tokens on the TTC and a Metropass will be a good buy for you. Even in February, that is 56 trips/tokens. Daily users easily benefit from it. But if you don’t travel every day on Toronto transit, there are other ways to make the Metropass worthwhile.
For people who use it to go to work and then do after work activities, the Metropass is a good idea. For example, if you take trips to and from work, as well as using it to go to meet friends or to take after work classes or to go to the gym, then you can benefit from having and using a Metropass. For example, 44 tokens for work plus 3 trips a week to classes plus one to friends adds up to 16 more tokens a month for a total of 60 tokens.
For people who have to stop to pick up their kids from childcare, the Metropass is good value. I used to pick up my son daily after work. That was 3 tokens every day, so most months that was 66 tokens.
For people who can share it, the Metropass is great value. For example, if a couple works different shifts, then together they potentially need 88 tokens each month to get them back and forth to work. Sharing a Metropass could save alot for such a couple.
Even people who don’t use the TTC all that much can still make the Metropass work for them if they can reduce the cost of it. For example, people who can buy the Metropass on subscription can get it for a lesser amount. That means you need to take less trips to break even. And if you pay enough taxes to break be able to claim your Metropasses as a tax expense, then you also need to take less trips to break even with the purchase.
If you take your total transportations costs, including taxis, Zipcars, etc, then you might find that having a Metropass is worth it. For example, you might find you grab a cab a few times each month because you don’t have tokens or cash. Switching to a Metropass, you find you do that less and therefore your overall spending on transportation each month is going down.
Cost aside, the other great benefit of the Metropass is convenience. All the hassle of dealing with buying tokens is gone. That convenience means you may be more likely to use the TTC when you have a Metropass, which leads you to make your money back from getting it. Also, you may find you enjoy yourself more by getting out more. It’s an intangible benefit, but a good one nonetheless.
I think for heavier users of the TTC, the Metropass is definitely worth it. And to be fair to Ed, he acknowledged a number of these points in a discussion he had on twitter. Whether or not the Metropass is worth it to you will depend on your own use of the TTC and your own math.
P.S. Thanks for reading this. If you have found it useful and you’d like to say thanks by buying me a coffee, you can do so here. Thanks! That’s awesome!
If you are an old geek or interested in computing history, especially the early days of the PC, then I highly recommend you check out the section of the Computer History Museum on CP/M. Before Microsoft and Apple there was CP/M. You can even download the source code! Fun! 🙂
See Early Digital Research CP/M Source Code | Computer History Museum.
I don’t think highly of lists that supposedly help you to get in shape. I am happy to make an exception for this one: 15 Former Couch Potatoes Share Their Best Tips For Getting In Shape.
It’s not so much a list as it is 15 different stories. Each person has a different approach to getting in shape. What worked for one person may not work for you, but there is a good chance that out of the 15 stories, there will be more than a few new ideas that you can steal and use.
I also liked that it is not a list of advice from people who were athletes or people who were in good shape already. The people on this list were out of shape, and they lost weight and became fit using the sensible approaches they took.
I don’t usually recommend Buzzfeed articles, but this one is a very good exception.
If getting in shape was one of your resolutions for the New Year, this is a good thing for you to read now.
This came out awhile ago (As Boom Lures App Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living – NYTimes.com) but if you are thinking about writing apps for a living, then you should read it.
If you have a great idea for an app and a passion to develop it, you should. Just finish the above piece in the Times and keep it in mind.
And the BBC has a good story on it here: BBC News – Google Glass sales halted but firm says kit is not dead, including this comment that sums things up in a nutshell:
Google has tried to present this announcement as just another step in the evolution of an amazing innovation. But make no mistake – Google Glass is dead, at least in its present form.
I would say it’s been dead for sometime, and while wearable technology is alive and well, this piece of it is long overdue to be written off.
Read the BBC story: it has a good review of the history of Glass, what will happen next, and why Glass never had traction.
Do you find it weird when you search for something, then go to other sites, and it seems like the product is following you around? Do you worry that sites are tracking information about you and you want to stop it?
I’d like to say there is an easy way to put an end to such tracking, but it doesn’t seem to be so. If anything, companies like Facebook, Google and others have a big financial interest in tracking you, regardless of what you think, and they are going to make it hard for you to put an end to it all.
That said, if you still want to take action, I recommend these links. They highlight tools you can use and steps you can take to limit tracking. You don’t have to be technical to read them, but you have to be comfortable making changes to your system.
Some thoughts of my own:
As one of my areas of skill development this year, I am teaching myself Python (the programming language). I had a number of different sites offering help with it, but I have found these three the most useful, so far. I have found each of them useful, but I have spent the most time on “medium”. If you are interested in learning Python, I recommend you check these out:
Fast: Tutorial – Learn Python in 10 minutes – Stavros’ Stuff. Great as a cheatsheet or a quick intro to Python or if you used to do work with Python but haven’t done it in awhile.
Medium:the Python Tutorial from python.org. If you know other programming languages, this is a good starting point.
Slow: Learn Python the Hard Way. Good if you don’t know much about programming and want to make Python the first language you know really well.
Yes, it is possible to write good articles on what is the bane of our current existence: computer passwords. The first one talks about the top passwords that people commonly use. The second one is a beautifully written piece about the thought that goes into people’s passwords.
You will have an entirely new perspective on passwords after reading this.
P.S. Thanks to Anna P for pointing out the second one.
Then send them over to this really smart post by Sarah McIntyre: i want to make cartoons & comics but i have no idea where to start!. It’s packed with great advice and plenty of links for anyone who would love to do this but is stuck on how to start.
Superb. (Image is a link to her post.)
If “read more” is one of your New Year Resolutions, then Austin Kleon has 33 short pieces of advice on how to read more and read better that you should review, here: 33 thoughts on reading.
I am trying to adopt most of these. I have adopted many of them and the result has been much more reading by me for the last few years. I think the more of these you adopt, the more reading you will get done.
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Posted in advice
Tagged austinkl, Books, reading, resolutions
If you have made a commitment to getting fit in 2015, that’s good. If you think you can manage it, that’s better. But if you think you might have troubles with it, then consider the Pact app.
It works like this, according to Pact:
For more info, see their site: Pact – Commit to you.
I have no idea how well it works, but it sounds interesting.
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Posted in fitness
Tagged app, fitness, iphone, resolution
If you’ve made resolutions and plan to stick to them, that’s good. What may help you stick with them is this article: A Master Plan for Taking Back Control of Your Life – 99U. Essentially it is a list of general guidelines that can help you on your way as you tackle things like….resolutions. You will find it useful in other ways too.
I think it’s worth a read. I’d also recommend Tony Schwartz in general: I’ve read a number of other pieces by him on the 99U and on other sites and I have found them to be valuable.
Happy New Year!
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Posted in advice
Tagged 99u, advice, guidelines, newyearresolutions, resolutions
Last year, I was discouraged: I was doing a lot with little to show for it. I would frequently be up until midnight doing chores and trying to stay on top of things and I was exhausted. Despite all that effort, I could not tell you what I had accomplished and I wasn’t getting any feedback telling me either. I decided I had to change that, and to change that, I did two major things: I started using a spreadsheet and I started using Workflowy. Let me explain how these two tools made a difference for me.
First, I started using a spreadsheet to track everything I did. Before I would write my todolists on a piece of paper, do it, then throw the list away. With the spreadsheet, I put all my todos in there. Initially it had two columns: a todo column and a status column. Each todo had an associated status: Pending (i.e., I hadn’t started the task), WIP (work in progress, meaning I had started the task but hadn’t completed it) or Complete. As I did each todo, I changed the status from Pending to WIP (Work in progress) to Complete. I would try to only tackle tasks that were in the spreadsheet. If I did something that wasn’t in there, I started adding it there. (That last thing of capturing all todos in the spreadsheet was important.)
Very soon, I could see from the spreadsheet that I was doing a lot. In fact, the todolist expanded greatly. So I added a new column: priority. Each todo has a priority: 1-4. Once or twice a week, I reviewed my todos to see if they had the right priority. Then I ignored anything that wasn’t a 1 until the next review period. Prioritization helped me to focus.
Despite that, I still had many many todos, and still too many todos with a number 1 priority. I added additional columns over the year and this helped me manage what I had to get done. Even when my todo list had over 500 items on it, I could quickly filter out all but the 3 or 4 items I needed to focus on for a day. I added a column to help me separate Work todos from Home (not work related) todos. Then I subcategorized the Todos: there are todos related to my kids, todos concerning Money, my Home, even Me!
Of all the colums in the todo list, I found this last column of subcategories to be the most important in terms of getting a sense of accomplishment. Here’s why. At the end of each month, I took the completed todos and sorted them by subcategory. I could see from this where I was (and wasn’t) spending my time. For example, I might see that I was spending a lot of my time dealing with House issues and not enough of my time with the Kids. Having this in front of me allowed me to better focus my time in the near future. (Note: you don’t have to wait until the end of the month to do this, and when I find I am really busy, I will do weekly or biweekly reviews to see how the month is shaping up).
At the end of the month, I create a new worksheet for the new month by making a copy of the existing todo list. That way, I can focus just on the todos for that month.
After a few months of this, it was easy to do. You might think it is a lot of effort, but with the spreadsheet I have, I found it easy to add to and sort the todos. Most days I spend less than a few minutes reviewing it.
Occasionally I do things that aren’t on the list. It doesn’t matter much: most todos end up in there. The main thing is I get to see that I am getting things done and I can see where my effort is going.
That’s the spreadsheet. At first, it was all I wanted. I could see what I was getting done each month, and that felt great. I was getting a sense of accomplishment every month. But it wasn’t enough. The problem with just using the spreadsheet was that it is very granular. I could see I was doing a lot of tasks, but was that good or bad? Also, sometimes a bunch of smaller tasks add up to a bigger task that should be highlighted, but the spreadsheet couldn’t do that for me. I needed a different approach. I needed a different tool. After thinking about this, I started using Workflowy (workflowy.com).
At the start of the month, I create a list of major activities I want to accomplish that month. (Workflowy is really great if you like lists: that’s why I picked it.) Then I make sure my todos for that month are in line with those major activities. At the end of the month, I roll up the tasks that I did and put them in workflowy according to the major activities. Additionally, I might look and see I accomplished a number of things in the month that I didn’t expect to at the start of the month. I will add them to Workflowy, too, creating a new major activity to describe them.
What I liked about this is that month after month I could now see I was accomplishing a lot. I wasn’t just doing just a lot of little things: I was getting bigger things done. I could also see what I wasn’t accomplishing (e.g. running) and then correct that (or at least accept it in light of the other things I was accomplishing).
The other thing I realized is that if you have a lot on your plate, then it is difficult to make a lot of achievements in one month, but over many months, you start to see you have accomplished a lot. You miss that as your review your day to day activities because you are juggling a lot. Even looking back over a month, you think: wow, I barely made a dent in things. But as you look back over 3 or 6 months, you can say: wow, I made big improvements in 3 or 6 or even a dozen areas.
There are lots of improvements that can be made on this system, depending on who you are. You may have the advantage of being able to focus in one or two areas. If so, you could use a simpler approach. If you have many major responsibilities and you want to make improvements in your own life, this approach may work for you. It works for me.
A template of my spreadsheet is here. It’s an XLS file.
As for the list I have each month in workflowy, I start with a template like this:
In Month X I plan to achieve the following
If you have read to this point: thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to do this. If you try this approach and it gives you some benefit, please let me know. Good luck! Accomplish great things!
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