Sunday, June 30, 2013
Even though this isnt a technical blog
I've decided to link it to my resume for developer auction ... it is on the internet, and anybody savvy would find it looking for me anyways. I hope they also see my associated blog for poetry... but trying to figure out somebody else's valuation methodology will always be tricky, and I may as well attempt to associate with people who share similar values. I doubt the five minutes per resume somebody in HR will spend wont include much time looking over what are essentially my notes to self jotted down during unemployment.
sunday night
Trying to prep a profile for a job finding website and having issues. I do not want to be rambling and incoherent. That's what this blog is for.
But yeah, trying to focus on it, but it is sort of bothering me with every edit. Need to convey technical expertise, can't point to a concrete example of ... buzz words ... not sure if that matters.
here is what I wrote so far, but Im thinking of just restarting based on the examples.
What projects have you worked on?
Developed risk management software which integrated data from multiple trading platform APIs, as well as multiple clearing firms, and proprietary data sources. Project included databases, Windows GUI programming, COM/OLE,
In the past I developed a number of websites primarily using Drupal and some custom modules.
Any technical challenges you've overcome?
I know that I have had some complicated technical issues, but I am not sure what level of detail conveys that. Debugging multi-threaded code can be challenging. Some times the most challenging part of shipping a new version is the realization that the MSDN documentation is not correct, at least with a given codebase and included libraries. Sometimes digging through layers of include files to realize why something isn't quite right is the challenge. A database redesign can be challenging when you are supposed to keep things functional while simultaneously not losing any data. Yeah, I don't know how to specifically answer this.... COM/OLE variants and IDispatches can be a terrible way to spend your day, pointers can be evil, or your best friend, not every library behaves as it should, but rolling your own takes longer than you expect, in the real world just because you've solved a problem once does not mean it is solved forever... and I'm rambling.
"Technical challenges" is a funny term to me. Based on the definition that popped up from Google (Technical: 'Requiring special knowledge to be understood') once you have gained the appropriate knowledge it isn't so much of a challenge, so in my mind gathering the right information is the problem, but saying that the hardest part of my previous jobs was gaining the appropriate knowledge from coworkers is disparaging and not 'technical' by the understanding of the question.
Do you have any personal projects?
Currently working on a personal chrome browser extension to streamline my own internet experience.
I also have a website I'd like to start, but it is music industry related and Id rather not get sued into oblivion so I have hesitated to pursue it.
I've been doing some of the projecteuler.net puzzles, but Im only about 20 into them, and can not say it is a huge priority for me.
What's your philosophy?
That's a loaded question.
Short answer, if we can educate the world most of the problems we face will go away.
My personal philosophy is that the current state of affairs has everybody wanting the world to be fair, and everybody wanting to provide their loved ones with better than fair opportunity, and the average person does not realize why there is a disconnect, so I am trying to work towards the first part without personally sacrificing the second part, while thinking about the third part.
But yeah, trying to focus on it, but it is sort of bothering me with every edit. Need to convey technical expertise, can't point to a concrete example of ... buzz words ... not sure if that matters.
here is what I wrote so far, but Im thinking of just restarting based on the examples.
What projects have you worked on?
Developed risk management software which integrated data from multiple trading platform APIs, as well as multiple clearing firms, and proprietary data sources. Project included databases, Windows GUI programming, COM/OLE,
In the past I developed a number of websites primarily using Drupal and some custom modules.
Any technical challenges you've overcome?
I know that I have had some complicated technical issues, but I am not sure what level of detail conveys that. Debugging multi-threaded code can be challenging. Some times the most challenging part of shipping a new version is the realization that the MSDN documentation is not correct, at least with a given codebase and included libraries. Sometimes digging through layers of include files to realize why something isn't quite right is the challenge. A database redesign can be challenging when you are supposed to keep things functional while simultaneously not losing any data. Yeah, I don't know how to specifically answer this.... COM/OLE variants and IDispatches can be a terrible way to spend your day, pointers can be evil, or your best friend, not every library behaves as it should, but rolling your own takes longer than you expect, in the real world just because you've solved a problem once does not mean it is solved forever... and I'm rambling.
"Technical challenges" is a funny term to me. Based on the definition that popped up from Google (Technical: 'Requiring special knowledge to be understood') once you have gained the appropriate knowledge it isn't so much of a challenge, so in my mind gathering the right information is the problem, but saying that the hardest part of my previous jobs was gaining the appropriate knowledge from coworkers is disparaging and not 'technical' by the understanding of the question.
Do you have any personal projects?
Currently working on a personal chrome browser extension to streamline my own internet experience.
I also have a website I'd like to start, but it is music industry related and Id rather not get sued into oblivion so I have hesitated to pursue it.
I've been doing some of the projecteuler.net puzzles, but Im only about 20 into them, and can not say it is a huge priority for me.
What's your philosophy?
That's a loaded question.
Short answer, if we can educate the world most of the problems we face will go away.
My personal philosophy is that the current state of affairs has everybody wanting the world to be fair, and everybody wanting to provide their loved ones with better than fair opportunity, and the average person does not realize why there is a disconnect, so I am trying to work towards the first part without personally sacrificing the second part, while thinking about the third part.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Half way through breakfast this morning the brick guy showed up again to put another coat of shellac on the bricks and the mortar between them. As my wife noted this morning, I've hardly had a day without an interruption to my R&R, and Ive been unable to schedule any travel because I've got family visitings for the 4th, and a 5k two weeks later, meaning I cant be gone for 2 weeks which sort of shoots any beach plans in the foot. Well, meh.
Started to watch xfiles this morning, stopped when rudy got in. Hello-Fresh delivery arrived, tossed that in the fridge, started reading another civil rights focused book. and ... Im going to get back to doing that, but I also plan on going running once my stomach is fully settled from breakfast. And yes, this post is truly worthless if you arent just looking for my day worth of stuff.
Started to watch xfiles this morning, stopped when rudy got in. Hello-Fresh delivery arrived, tossed that in the fridge, started reading another civil rights focused book. and ... Im going to get back to doing that, but I also plan on going running once my stomach is fully settled from breakfast. And yes, this post is truly worthless if you arent just looking for my day worth of stuff.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
I guess I'm thinking about econ
gdp came in below estimates today, market responded in a positively upbeat manner, not really surprising given the recent history. Zerohedge likes to refer to this as good news is good news and bad news is good news. I had trouble typing that out because the logic (or lack there of) is what is bothering me right now.
As somebody else said, we are borrowing money against the future, to fund current growth. Which would be true, if we needed to pay off our debt. And the real problem is that all anybody cares about is the margin, having 60 trillion in debt doesnt bother people because its such an astronomically large number. That number might be off, but I think the social security situation is incredible BS.
But really, we can spend more money than we have today because we assume we will make more money in the future is only ok when you arent spending orders of magnitude more money than you have, or when you are growing at a substantial rate. The joke in parallel programming class was if you can find some topic of interest that will take 8 years of compute time, it would be better to wait 2 years to buy the computers because by then it will only be 4 years of compute time, assuming moore's law (ish ~not actually what moore's law says.).
But our economy is only growing at 1.8%, and we are borrowing money at a rate below to that, but not significantly below that, so it seems to me that we are literally just taking money from our future selves and not making a particularly good investment of it. That is not to say I disagree with the Fed's actions. Well, I don't think they are doing things in the best way, but I do think austerity is the wrong approach, and anybody watching what happens to the market when it hears the word taper should see right away that the general rule of thumb is our markets are screwed if we aren't injecting freshly printed capital. But doesnt that just ring hollow?
/ramble
As somebody else said, we are borrowing money against the future, to fund current growth. Which would be true, if we needed to pay off our debt. And the real problem is that all anybody cares about is the margin, having 60 trillion in debt doesnt bother people because its such an astronomically large number. That number might be off, but I think the social security situation is incredible BS.
But really, we can spend more money than we have today because we assume we will make more money in the future is only ok when you arent spending orders of magnitude more money than you have, or when you are growing at a substantial rate. The joke in parallel programming class was if you can find some topic of interest that will take 8 years of compute time, it would be better to wait 2 years to buy the computers because by then it will only be 4 years of compute time, assuming moore's law (ish ~not actually what moore's law says.).
But our economy is only growing at 1.8%, and we are borrowing money at a rate below to that, but not significantly below that, so it seems to me that we are literally just taking money from our future selves and not making a particularly good investment of it. That is not to say I disagree with the Fed's actions. Well, I don't think they are doing things in the best way, but I do think austerity is the wrong approach, and anybody watching what happens to the market when it hears the word taper should see right away that the general rule of thumb is our markets are screwed if we aren't injecting freshly printed capital. But doesnt that just ring hollow?
/ramble
Another day
Big SCOTUS news today. Looks like they got something right, still not a good week for them.
Watching X-Files and reading stuff.
Spent some time on reddit http://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses/201/spring13/standards.shtml forbidding breaks and continues in loops. Not sure why that would be a coding standard. But, not going to spend that much time thinking about it.
Been thinking a lot about civil rights, finished the new jim crow yesterday, just read http://thefeministwire.com/2013/06/against-patriarchy-tools-for-men-to-further-feminist-revolution/ unfortunately the first suggestion is read these books, which nobody has time to do. Way to make the barrier to entry too high person who wrote that article.
I guess this harkens back to my whole buy in issue. To really get good at something you need to invest time and effort, and how can you pick which efforts to put yourself behind, because you cant just pick and choose. People love to say that in college you should take a wide swath of courses to see what is out there ('there's a time and a place for everything, and that's college' -southpark).
But at some point you can't get the level of depth required to make the decision. Should I choose vim or emacs? Should I bounce back and forth until I make a decision? Unfortunately, I just use nano when I need to make small changes and a IDE for everything else, but I know this isnt ideal, but relating to buy in part of the reason for not making a decision is not being certain what my focus is. I've obviously invested a lot of time on C++ and python, but maybe I should really be using LISP, or ruby on rails, and would my choice for how to develop and maintain code be different in different situations, and would time invested in an editor (especially in scripting in an editor) be worthwhile if I am going to make a jump like that?
So maybe my first step should be to pick vim, and start developing something.
But yeah back to the point about the feminism article linked, its got a lot of solid stuff in there, once you get past the read these books list. I dont know why the author led with that, but I guess there is a point to be made that you cant do some of the other things on the list until the knowledge of what to look for is obtained.
Todos:
Clean the bathroom,
go to soccer?
Watching X-Files and reading stuff.
Spent some time on reddit http://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses/201/spring13/standards.shtml forbidding breaks and continues in loops. Not sure why that would be a coding standard. But, not going to spend that much time thinking about it.
Been thinking a lot about civil rights, finished the new jim crow yesterday, just read http://thefeministwire.com/2013/06/against-patriarchy-tools-for-men-to-further-feminist-revolution/ unfortunately the first suggestion is read these books, which nobody has time to do. Way to make the barrier to entry too high person who wrote that article.
I guess this harkens back to my whole buy in issue. To really get good at something you need to invest time and effort, and how can you pick which efforts to put yourself behind, because you cant just pick and choose. People love to say that in college you should take a wide swath of courses to see what is out there ('there's a time and a place for everything, and that's college' -southpark).
But at some point you can't get the level of depth required to make the decision. Should I choose vim or emacs? Should I bounce back and forth until I make a decision? Unfortunately, I just use nano when I need to make small changes and a IDE for everything else, but I know this isnt ideal, but relating to buy in part of the reason for not making a decision is not being certain what my focus is. I've obviously invested a lot of time on C++ and python, but maybe I should really be using LISP, or ruby on rails, and would my choice for how to develop and maintain code be different in different situations, and would time invested in an editor (especially in scripting in an editor) be worthwhile if I am going to make a jump like that?
So maybe my first step should be to pick vim, and start developing something.
But yeah back to the point about the feminism article linked, its got a lot of solid stuff in there, once you get past the read these books list. I dont know why the author led with that, but I guess there is a point to be made that you cant do some of the other things on the list until the knowledge of what to look for is obtained.
Todos:
Clean the bathroom,
go to soccer?
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
guess I didnt post today.
once again sat around waiting for the brick guy to get here.
Watched a bunch of xfiles, ... this show is extremely long. currently at season 6 episode 15 ... so ... about 120 hours in or so? Lots of greatness in there lots of meh not so good, as well as some dated elements but overall I am happy Im taking the time to watch my way through it. I feel like Ive had some debt to being a nerd by not watching it.
But ... I guess thats a broader thing. that I will follow up on later.
Oh and I guess I failed to start doing my writing in a more procedural well thought out and managed manner.
Finished 'The New Jim Crow' book, contributed to a discussion on facebook RE: the supreme court and its failings of late.
Went for a run, second since quitting, but still strange to me to exercise, I need to get out of the house and walk more, do not want to turn into a total slouch / shut-in.
Pulled out of an RSVP to attend a charity auction at the wife's behest which is frustrating me. Need to organize my thoughts to discuss the issue in a reasonable manner.
Bought a coding book (Code Complete) over the weekend and just got it and was flipping through, and saw a section managing your manager, which intrigued me so I read it. And it suggested steps to follow for dealing with a manager and Id attempted to do all of them at my last job; the final step was to quit. which confirmed that quitting my job was the right move in my situation. Sort of hysterical.
Talking with a friend who works for MS about job hunting. He suggested doing online mock interviews and training online. I believe I need to have a portfolio of code samples... but what language should I be focusing on?
Watched a bunch of xfiles, ... this show is extremely long. currently at season 6 episode 15 ... so ... about 120 hours in or so? Lots of greatness in there lots of meh not so good, as well as some dated elements but overall I am happy Im taking the time to watch my way through it. I feel like Ive had some debt to being a nerd by not watching it.
But ... I guess thats a broader thing. that I will follow up on later.
Oh and I guess I failed to start doing my writing in a more procedural well thought out and managed manner.
Finished 'The New Jim Crow' book, contributed to a discussion on facebook RE: the supreme court and its failings of late.
Went for a run, second since quitting, but still strange to me to exercise, I need to get out of the house and walk more, do not want to turn into a total slouch / shut-in.
Pulled out of an RSVP to attend a charity auction at the wife's behest which is frustrating me. Need to organize my thoughts to discuss the issue in a reasonable manner.
Bought a coding book (Code Complete) over the weekend and just got it and was flipping through, and saw a section managing your manager, which intrigued me so I read it. And it suggested steps to follow for dealing with a manager and Id attempted to do all of them at my last job; the final step was to quit. which confirmed that quitting my job was the right move in my situation. Sort of hysterical.
Talking with a friend who works for MS about job hunting. He suggested doing online mock interviews and training online. I believe I need to have a portfolio of code samples... but what language should I be focusing on?
Monday, June 24, 2013
reading an article my mother posted on facebook
http://www.northjersey.com/hawthorne/NJs_tough_new_writing_tests_have_students_teachers_anxious.html?page=all
re: standardized tests and student difficulty with written work.
On the one hand, I completely agree that writing is important. The article also makes me think about myself and how I need to focus my writing more to concretely identify the purpose and provide structure to the thought such that it actually conveys a point.
On the other hand, I have a feeling there is value in the stream of consciousness style of let me find my point for myself and show the whole journey style. Obviously in earlier writing this method can meander even more, but as I've seen with my own writing, this is probably not correct.
So, I may try and take a more direct approach and actually force myself to adhere to some format or structure to get myself directed towards goals ... or something. Experimentation and seeing what happens. Tomorrow will be the testing grounds.
GO BLACKHAWKS... I mean Capitals, but they lost a while ago ... so ... YEAH BLACKHAWKS.
re: standardized tests and student difficulty with written work.
On the one hand, I completely agree that writing is important. The article also makes me think about myself and how I need to focus my writing more to concretely identify the purpose and provide structure to the thought such that it actually conveys a point.
On the other hand, I have a feeling there is value in the stream of consciousness style of let me find my point for myself and show the whole journey style. Obviously in earlier writing this method can meander even more, but as I've seen with my own writing, this is probably not correct.
So, I may try and take a more direct approach and actually force myself to adhere to some format or structure to get myself directed towards goals ... or something. Experimentation and seeing what happens. Tomorrow will be the testing grounds.
GO BLACKHAWKS... I mean Capitals, but they lost a while ago ... so ... YEAH BLACKHAWKS.
after the deluge
... of old posts, looks like I've not made any earth shattering revelations. No shit Sherlock.
but whatever. Looks like my allergies are starting to subside, still coughing up nastiness but that will subside as the nasal drip goes away... hopefully. but ... got a decent enough night of rest, landlady had said the bricklayer guy would be back to look at things today, he's generally been arriving earlier than now so I'm not sure if the landlady was blowing smoke, or if I should sit around longer, decided to write this to try and get some coherence in my thoughts.
Stayed up last night playing fable 3, its a pretty good game, but the endgame of ruling the realm is a bit strange, gives you a fake time limit to raise funds, but the emphasis is on fake, countdown of days only goes down when you do main questline things, and thus, if you avoid the main quest you can just let your ownership of property build your bankroll and then use those funds. so basically, you could sit in a corner for five hours to accomplish the primary objective. but whatever, tis fun, simple gameplay, but fun.
currently have a few tech tabs open,
http://grahampentheny.com/ reading the 'Why I’m quitting the C++ Grandmaster Certification course' which interests me because I thought about signing up but decided against it when I had a job. Maybe I should have gone through with it.
http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3_bfg/index.php doom three code review comments potentially interesting, I havent had a code review since six months into my job ... ... so 2009 ... in fact, I dont know if anybody but myself has looked at much Ive written since then, maybe one tool I wrote for my boss.
http://blog.lunatech.com/2009/02/03/what-every-web-developer-must-know-about-url-encoding
and the brick guy showed up... basically needs to fill in some grout, and come back tomorrow to stain the grout to match the existing grout. Also commented that to really fix this floor the apartment would need to be vacant, whole floor needs to come out, the layer of mortar over the base of the floor ... is basically bubbly, pockets where things have gone wrong, real solution is to pull out the entire layer all the brick and redo the entire thing, would require hauling a ton of material, whatever... Im not sure if the landlady wants to do that at all as she is old and may just be leaving it for the next owner, or if she is waiting for me to move out to do that work or what. Just rambling as it is on my mind.
Looks like the market is down again, yay being short while unemployed. My over arching world view is that things are screwed up and the central bank stimulus is short sighted and thus we are doomed for another bubble pop aside, the real reason was, if I'm out of work it will be easier to find a job if the market is going up, so insurance against that is being short. ... which leads to another point ... I am interested in finance and economics, the joke being that they are opposite sides of a coin and lead to entirely different thoughts about the same things, but whatever. currently reading an econ article about why a 15 dollar minimum wage is bad http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/22/a-15-minimum-wage-is-a-terrible-idea/
but the real point was that I'm not interested enough in the market to do it for a living. Which may or may not be true... the highest return on investment for knowledge should be knowledge about investing ... as opposed to trading? whatever. point being its not a passion for me, its just hey markets are inevitably a part of life, so it should probably be good to know something about markets, but the markets seem pretty broken to me. for all sorts of reasons, which is probably just a call for another post, but I am probably harboring some animosity there, so don't know if I should write it all up ... eh, I probably will, so I shall move on.
I guess the reason the previous paragraph ballooned is that I'm a voracious consumer of almost all information, so I may be interested in any topic, but do I consider that topic to be a driving force in my life ... and ... sadly, thats ... a bad way to phrase it, Im interested in science, physics, chemistry, bio because they are driving forces in my life, for the same reason I am interested in psychology, sociology, economics ... et cetera. So I read a lot, and I watch a lot of television, and I consume as much as I can get my hands on. And part of the reason I am not being particularly productive in this down time, aside from the point of a previous post that I've not yet actually gotten the R&R I want, is that I have a backlog of things to read, watch, and play that ... I paid for, I invested capital in, but do not have the human capital to consume when I'm investing that in a job. And currently a job is centrally not the focal point of what I am doing, although, the idea that I want to find the perfect job for me is an all consuming thought.
I also signed up for odesk this weekend, partially just to have a looksy at what the job market looks like on there, not entirely sure how it works, passed the basic test they give you that says you have a basic understanding of how their client relationship software works, but I was a little confused about the software they make you run as Ive not installed it, and Im not sure if I can on a chromebook / unix environment, don't really feel like reading through pages of bs to set up a method for doing work I am not sure if I am going to really use. will follow this up below. Reading eulas worthless, reading documentation generally helpful, but only in so much as the docs are useful for a compare contrast with something you already know. Here is how a list works is not something I want to read unless it focuses on the how to get tasks done, or differences from expectations. Ugh boilerplate.
When was the last time anybody read a eula. When I started my last job I read my contract, and people gave me shit for it, somebody made a comment, I dont know if anybody has actually read their contract before, isnt that what lawyers are for. And I want to start a website, but the boilerplate is silly, basically I cannot make any promises because we live in the real world and real things may happen to prevent other things from happening. Thats the basis of any eula Ive read, and they always include as far as applicable law allows, or some such nonsense. But really I just dont want to start something to find myself sued into poverty because I was trying to accomplish something. But yeah, I like to read things, and Ive tried reading eulas and its silly, Id like to write a little dif tool that compares the eula's to previous versions each time you use a website to see if they have made changes and pop up a warning message and maybe some way to visualize the changes. Maybe that will be my next browser extension project once I finish some more reddit filtration tasks on my current project, which I will throw onto git, and be embarrassed by if anybody ever looks at it. JS is not exactly my forte, but whatever.
To do list for the day,
get food from https://www.myfitfoods.com/ (basically 'enrolled' with the wife. thursday after mathing with my buddy)
do laundry,
soccer? (not sure if we have numbers today)
consume some media (book:the new jim crow, tv: xfiles, eureka, games: fable3, fallout3)
watch blackhawks game.
yeah I ramble a lot, maybe I should cut back on that.
but whatever. Looks like my allergies are starting to subside, still coughing up nastiness but that will subside as the nasal drip goes away... hopefully. but ... got a decent enough night of rest, landlady had said the bricklayer guy would be back to look at things today, he's generally been arriving earlier than now so I'm not sure if the landlady was blowing smoke, or if I should sit around longer, decided to write this to try and get some coherence in my thoughts.
Stayed up last night playing fable 3, its a pretty good game, but the endgame of ruling the realm is a bit strange, gives you a fake time limit to raise funds, but the emphasis is on fake, countdown of days only goes down when you do main questline things, and thus, if you avoid the main quest you can just let your ownership of property build your bankroll and then use those funds. so basically, you could sit in a corner for five hours to accomplish the primary objective. but whatever, tis fun, simple gameplay, but fun.
currently have a few tech tabs open,
http://grahampentheny.com/ reading the 'Why I’m quitting the C++ Grandmaster Certification course' which interests me because I thought about signing up but decided against it when I had a job. Maybe I should have gone through with it.
http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3_bfg/index.php doom three code review comments potentially interesting, I havent had a code review since six months into my job ... ... so 2009 ... in fact, I dont know if anybody but myself has looked at much Ive written since then, maybe one tool I wrote for my boss.
http://blog.lunatech.com/2009/02/03/what-every-web-developer-must-know-about-url-encoding
and the brick guy showed up... basically needs to fill in some grout, and come back tomorrow to stain the grout to match the existing grout. Also commented that to really fix this floor the apartment would need to be vacant, whole floor needs to come out, the layer of mortar over the base of the floor ... is basically bubbly, pockets where things have gone wrong, real solution is to pull out the entire layer all the brick and redo the entire thing, would require hauling a ton of material, whatever... Im not sure if the landlady wants to do that at all as she is old and may just be leaving it for the next owner, or if she is waiting for me to move out to do that work or what. Just rambling as it is on my mind.
Looks like the market is down again, yay being short while unemployed. My over arching world view is that things are screwed up and the central bank stimulus is short sighted and thus we are doomed for another bubble pop aside, the real reason was, if I'm out of work it will be easier to find a job if the market is going up, so insurance against that is being short. ... which leads to another point ... I am interested in finance and economics, the joke being that they are opposite sides of a coin and lead to entirely different thoughts about the same things, but whatever. currently reading an econ article about why a 15 dollar minimum wage is bad http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/22/a-15-minimum-wage-is-a-terrible-idea/
but the real point was that I'm not interested enough in the market to do it for a living. Which may or may not be true... the highest return on investment for knowledge should be knowledge about investing ... as opposed to trading? whatever. point being its not a passion for me, its just hey markets are inevitably a part of life, so it should probably be good to know something about markets, but the markets seem pretty broken to me. for all sorts of reasons, which is probably just a call for another post, but I am probably harboring some animosity there, so don't know if I should write it all up ... eh, I probably will, so I shall move on.
I guess the reason the previous paragraph ballooned is that I'm a voracious consumer of almost all information, so I may be interested in any topic, but do I consider that topic to be a driving force in my life ... and ... sadly, thats ... a bad way to phrase it, Im interested in science, physics, chemistry, bio because they are driving forces in my life, for the same reason I am interested in psychology, sociology, economics ... et cetera. So I read a lot, and I watch a lot of television, and I consume as much as I can get my hands on. And part of the reason I am not being particularly productive in this down time, aside from the point of a previous post that I've not yet actually gotten the R&R I want, is that I have a backlog of things to read, watch, and play that ... I paid for, I invested capital in, but do not have the human capital to consume when I'm investing that in a job. And currently a job is centrally not the focal point of what I am doing, although, the idea that I want to find the perfect job for me is an all consuming thought.
I also signed up for odesk this weekend, partially just to have a looksy at what the job market looks like on there, not entirely sure how it works, passed the basic test they give you that says you have a basic understanding of how their client relationship software works, but I was a little confused about the software they make you run as Ive not installed it, and Im not sure if I can on a chromebook / unix environment, don't really feel like reading through pages of bs to set up a method for doing work I am not sure if I am going to really use. will follow this up below. Reading eulas worthless, reading documentation generally helpful, but only in so much as the docs are useful for a compare contrast with something you already know. Here is how a list works is not something I want to read unless it focuses on the how to get tasks done, or differences from expectations. Ugh boilerplate.
When was the last time anybody read a eula. When I started my last job I read my contract, and people gave me shit for it, somebody made a comment, I dont know if anybody has actually read their contract before, isnt that what lawyers are for. And I want to start a website, but the boilerplate is silly, basically I cannot make any promises because we live in the real world and real things may happen to prevent other things from happening. Thats the basis of any eula Ive read, and they always include as far as applicable law allows, or some such nonsense. But really I just dont want to start something to find myself sued into poverty because I was trying to accomplish something. But yeah, I like to read things, and Ive tried reading eulas and its silly, Id like to write a little dif tool that compares the eula's to previous versions each time you use a website to see if they have made changes and pop up a warning message and maybe some way to visualize the changes. Maybe that will be my next browser extension project once I finish some more reddit filtration tasks on my current project, which I will throw onto git, and be embarrassed by if anybody ever looks at it. JS is not exactly my forte, but whatever.
To do list for the day,
get food from https://www.myfitfoods.com/ (basically 'enrolled' with the wife. thursday after mathing with my buddy)
do laundry,
soccer? (not sure if we have numbers today)
consume some media (book:the new jim crow, tv: xfiles, eureka, games: fable3, fallout3)
watch blackhawks game.
yeah I ramble a lot, maybe I should cut back on that.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
another post I started and didnt finish
started this, still sort of agree, but then again, technology:
be the change you wish to see in the world
human society is really big, and I dont say that as a cop out because it is so big it is intractable, I say it because it is my belief that it needs to shrink somewhere in the near term for it to continue existing in the long term. or if the population doesnt shrink then the individual lifestyles need to change.
global warming, water ... whatever, tragedy of the commons problems really, cap and trade would be great because it would allow somebody to set prices on the future costs of pollution and that economic incentive would then reach the costs of the consumer, but as it is gas and resources are generally valued based on their extraction costs despite their obvious impact on our global ecology. nobody likes to think about the 10 year olds standing over a pot of boiling chemicals trying to extract gold from transistors when they think about recycling or the factory workers,
american consumerism has failed,
:: I guess where I was going with that, is that since the economics of it arent valuing life appropriately at this point, it is cheap to kill everybody, and ... thats sort of just ... likely to happen because its cheap, when stupid people can afford terrible things, they will buy them... sort of like mcdonalds, let a man get diabetes he will get diabetes, just ask wilford brimley ... also ... after looking back at myself via these posts, not much has changed, just reached a point where I feel like I need to try harder, and Ive not started yet ... but yeah, still clarifying my thoughts. sort of plays into the want to make an impact kick and a how to potentially help the world, and I keep listing the things that are on my mind today, but the question is what should I be reading to confirm the belief or more fully inform myself of my options with regards to impact and value, as well as with regards to type of company .... meh, sick of writing
be the change you wish to see in the world
human society is really big, and I dont say that as a cop out because it is so big it is intractable, I say it because it is my belief that it needs to shrink somewhere in the near term for it to continue existing in the long term. or if the population doesnt shrink then the individual lifestyles need to change.
global warming, water ... whatever, tragedy of the commons problems really, cap and trade would be great because it would allow somebody to set prices on the future costs of pollution and that economic incentive would then reach the costs of the consumer, but as it is gas and resources are generally valued based on their extraction costs despite their obvious impact on our global ecology. nobody likes to think about the 10 year olds standing over a pot of boiling chemicals trying to extract gold from transistors when they think about recycling or the factory workers,
american consumerism has failed,
:: I guess where I was going with that, is that since the economics of it arent valuing life appropriately at this point, it is cheap to kill everybody, and ... thats sort of just ... likely to happen because its cheap, when stupid people can afford terrible things, they will buy them... sort of like mcdonalds, let a man get diabetes he will get diabetes, just ask wilford brimley ... also ... after looking back at myself via these posts, not much has changed, just reached a point where I feel like I need to try harder, and Ive not started yet ... but yeah, still clarifying my thoughts. sort of plays into the want to make an impact kick and a how to potentially help the world, and I keep listing the things that are on my mind today, but the question is what should I be reading to confirm the belief or more fully inform myself of my options with regards to impact and value, as well as with regards to type of company .... meh, sick of writing
another old post,
just figure Ill go through and look at drafts and stick them up on the wall:
I just started a post and got too distracted
what system can you devise that satisfies the requirement that everybody starts off on equal footing, and people have a chance to make their children's lives better than average?
contradiction.
the best you can do, is start everybody off on equal footing, and hope that people work to improve the average such that their progeny have a better chance.
But then you have leeches, and your improvements to your progeny are at the very margin unless the average is kept objectionably low and your efforts can help raise the average to tolerable.
::ya
I actually had part of this conversation recently with lecky ... the second half. ... but yeah ... the perfect world isn't really going to happen, sort of funny.
I just started a post and got too distracted
what system can you devise that satisfies the requirement that everybody starts off on equal footing, and people have a chance to make their children's lives better than average?
contradiction.
the best you can do, is start everybody off on equal footing, and hope that people work to improve the average such that their progeny have a better chance.
But then you have leeches, and your improvements to your progeny are at the very margin unless the average is kept objectionably low and your efforts can help raise the average to tolerable.
::ya
I actually had part of this conversation recently with lecky ... the second half. ... but yeah ... the perfect world isn't really going to happen, sort of funny.
Aaron Swartz
wrote this a while ago, meant to finish it, never did:
For those who missed the news, Aaron Swartz committed suicide recently. For those who don't know who that is... all you really need to know is that he has impacted your life, which is more than you can say about most people. He was one of those people who everybody recognized as a genius... who lived up to the label. He was famous in tech circles by the time he was fifteen. He cowrote the RSS specification as well as reddit's engine, but his largest contribution to society was in his advocacy for an open internet and his impact on helping to prevent SOPA from getting passed.
I related with this web entity, and supported his causes and applauded his contributions to the internet, but it wasnt until a year or two ago when I read a writeup of his contributions to the fight against SOPA did I really investigate his character and become emotionally invested in his life. I related with practically everything he had done, and reading his blog entries revealed that despite his proactive contributions and web celebrity he was a grounded individual who had very similar thought process to my own. For a time Id hoped to be able to meet him and maybe discuss philosophy.
and actions which garnered him fame, many of his views on the world highly aligned with my own. His ability to push forward and impact change at such a young age and his seemingly fearless attitude of pushing forward regardless of the odds against him inspired me.
Looking back, I had an inkling that he was naive, but I brushed it aside as letting my fear about risking myself, and
: to continue:
I guess I was gonna get preachy, and hopefully motivated, but ... failed. young guy died because the government was terrible, harkens to where my head is at at this point. contribute to society in a way that I deem important. hopefully make an impact. Education / the dispersal of information over the internet.... thats about where my heads at, but its not specific.
For those who missed the news, Aaron Swartz committed suicide recently. For those who don't know who that is... all you really need to know is that he has impacted your life, which is more than you can say about most people. He was one of those people who everybody recognized as a genius... who lived up to the label. He was famous in tech circles by the time he was fifteen. He cowrote the RSS specification as well as reddit's engine, but his largest contribution to society was in his advocacy for an open internet and his impact on helping to prevent SOPA from getting passed.
I related with this web entity, and supported his causes and applauded his contributions to the internet, but it wasnt until a year or two ago when I read a writeup of his contributions to the fight against SOPA did I really investigate his character and become emotionally invested in his life. I related with practically everything he had done, and reading his blog entries revealed that despite his proactive contributions and web celebrity he was a grounded individual who had very similar thought process to my own. For a time Id hoped to be able to meet him and maybe discuss philosophy.
and actions which garnered him fame, many of his views on the world highly aligned with my own. His ability to push forward and impact change at such a young age and his seemingly fearless attitude of pushing forward regardless of the odds against him inspired me.
Looking back, I had an inkling that he was naive, but I brushed it aside as letting my fear about risking myself, and
: to continue:
I guess I was gonna get preachy, and hopefully motivated, but ... failed. young guy died because the government was terrible, harkens to where my head is at at this point. contribute to society in a way that I deem important. hopefully make an impact. Education / the dispersal of information over the internet.... thats about where my heads at, but its not specific.
Allergies are killing me...
Sinus headaches are terrible.
Aside from the discomfort, trying to figure out how to spend my weekend.
will update this post in a moment, figure I should comment on my last post with an update as opposed to making a new post.
Which I am doing now. Currently watching x-files. I'm a little disappointed, I quit my job almost three weeks ago and still haven't caught up on sleep. Construction both inside my house and on the street outside, and my sleep cycle preventing me from falling asleep early enough, and sinus issues making it difficult to breath / fall asleep. Incredibly frustrating.
But anyways. Still trying to reach a balance between productive endeavors and leisure, kind of want to focus on leisure until Ive reached some zen like calm state where I have true clarity, but ... not sure I can do that in reality, the adages suggest that the only way to make progress is to take action, and Im not sure how to decide what actions will get to my goals.
The more I dwell on things the more I want to focus professionally on information / education. It seems to be the approach I can take in life to maximize my positive impact on the world. And my head naturally followed that sentence with "Nihilism", which I guess is how I ended up in this situation in the first place. Not that I've all of a sudden changed philosophical views, and I would generally say I don't have ... pronounced(?) views, there is a desire to do good, but the understanding that the overwhelming complexity of the system does not make that a simple task. Education is the clearest answer to improve lives, but, unfortunately, education leads to paragraphs like this. The people taking decisive action are the under educated and they are causing problems, not to be angry or overly generalized, but when I see satellite photos of north dakota burning fuel away for no good reason I can only think that short sited decision making processes are unfortunately leading us towards a problematic place. Rambling and trying to watch xfiles simultaneously is hard. Im not holding myself to a tight editorial standard so Im not particularly bothered, but if anybody else decides to read this and interact with me I will spend some more time and effort to clarify my thoughts in case there is concern I've misstated my premise.
Am I making excuses? Should I get off my ass, ... or should I sit around until I feel 100% into something... or 95% ... or something.
Aside from the discomfort, trying to figure out how to spend my weekend.
will update this post in a moment, figure I should comment on my last post with an update as opposed to making a new post.
Which I am doing now. Currently watching x-files. I'm a little disappointed, I quit my job almost three weeks ago and still haven't caught up on sleep. Construction both inside my house and on the street outside, and my sleep cycle preventing me from falling asleep early enough, and sinus issues making it difficult to breath / fall asleep. Incredibly frustrating.
But anyways. Still trying to reach a balance between productive endeavors and leisure, kind of want to focus on leisure until Ive reached some zen like calm state where I have true clarity, but ... not sure I can do that in reality, the adages suggest that the only way to make progress is to take action, and Im not sure how to decide what actions will get to my goals.
The more I dwell on things the more I want to focus professionally on information / education. It seems to be the approach I can take in life to maximize my positive impact on the world. And my head naturally followed that sentence with "Nihilism", which I guess is how I ended up in this situation in the first place. Not that I've all of a sudden changed philosophical views, and I would generally say I don't have ... pronounced(?) views, there is a desire to do good, but the understanding that the overwhelming complexity of the system does not make that a simple task. Education is the clearest answer to improve lives, but, unfortunately, education leads to paragraphs like this. The people taking decisive action are the under educated and they are causing problems, not to be angry or overly generalized, but when I see satellite photos of north dakota burning fuel away for no good reason I can only think that short sited decision making processes are unfortunately leading us towards a problematic place. Rambling and trying to watch xfiles simultaneously is hard. Im not holding myself to a tight editorial standard so Im not particularly bothered, but if anybody else decides to read this and interact with me I will spend some more time and effort to clarify my thoughts in case there is concern I've misstated my premise.
Am I making excuses? Should I get off my ass, ... or should I sit around until I feel 100% into something... or 95% ... or something.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
meeting to do math
Today my only real plan is to meet up with a buddy of mine who was a math major so we can explore our respective fields, he wants to learn more computer science topics and I would like to explore some mathematics concepts with him, not entirely sure where his strengths lie, but I believe it can be a mutually beneficial exercise.
We will be discussing project euler problems as a primary topic.
Id like to delve into set theory, and he would like to learn about complexity theory.
Beyond that, we are just going to try and nerd out a little bit. Because why not.
Im interested to see how productive this is. Ive got an hour to prep, so Im downloading him some random cs class notes, I can't find my notes from college, because I donated them to my fraternity, and I fear they were thrown away. However, since the internet is great I am sure I will find something. Ill bring along the only pure low level cs books that I have, SICP and c++ for you++ ... from my high school days ... eventually if he wants to get more into the programmer as a lifestyle/career Ill toss him the other books Ive got on the shelf. I am saddened that I lost my algorithms, database, networking, and systems books as I intentionally saved them, but they were left behind in a move I made. They were pretty bulky, and hopefully I can find some reading materials in an online form.
So far Ive pulled:
automata/computation theory notes: http://www.eng.utah.edu/~cs3100/KonradNotes.pdf
complexity theory notes: http://www.nada.kth.se/~johanh/complexitylecturenotes.pdf
database notes: http://www.esp.org/db-fund.pdf
algorithms notes ... although ... Im not going to link direct to the pdf due to liscense terms
http://larc.unt.edu/ian/books/free/lnoa.pdf ... it may make more sense to just link to the MIT algorithms page http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.006/spring11/notes.shtml as I imagine their notes are in the decent to quite good range...
networking notes: ... having a hard time finding anything reasonable, http://computernetworkingnotes.com/ keeps popping up due to search terms, need to type in a bunch of related things that wont redirect to a wiki page.
and this looks to be very relevant. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/gg243376.pdf obviously I should have said tcp/ip instead of networking, why? I dont know ... actually I do, but if you have any idea why Im rambling you probably ... Ill stop now.
not that any of these resources match a textbook, but Im hopefully they will provide a reasonable jumping off point for discussions. Not that I know how far or deeply we will delve into anything today or at all over the course or my unemployment, but trying to provide a nerdy guide to some cs topics that everybody should understand.
I imagine we will start with some catch up and discussion of goals, but, as the boy scouts say, be prepared. Note to self, load a flash drive with this information.
We will be discussing project euler problems as a primary topic.
Id like to delve into set theory, and he would like to learn about complexity theory.
Beyond that, we are just going to try and nerd out a little bit. Because why not.
Im interested to see how productive this is. Ive got an hour to prep, so Im downloading him some random cs class notes, I can't find my notes from college, because I donated them to my fraternity, and I fear they were thrown away. However, since the internet is great I am sure I will find something. Ill bring along the only pure low level cs books that I have, SICP and c++ for you++ ... from my high school days ... eventually if he wants to get more into the programmer as a lifestyle/career Ill toss him the other books Ive got on the shelf. I am saddened that I lost my algorithms, database, networking, and systems books as I intentionally saved them, but they were left behind in a move I made. They were pretty bulky, and hopefully I can find some reading materials in an online form.
So far Ive pulled:
automata/computation theory notes: http://www.eng.utah.edu/~cs3100/KonradNotes.pdf
complexity theory notes: http://www.nada.kth.se/~johanh/complexitylecturenotes.pdf
database notes: http://www.esp.org/db-fund.pdf
algorithms notes ... although ... Im not going to link direct to the pdf due to liscense terms
http://larc.unt.edu/ian/books/free/lnoa.pdf ... it may make more sense to just link to the MIT algorithms page http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.006/spring11/notes.shtml as I imagine their notes are in the decent to quite good range...
networking notes: ... having a hard time finding anything reasonable, http://computernetworkingnotes.com/ keeps popping up due to search terms, need to type in a bunch of related things that wont redirect to a wiki page.
and this looks to be very relevant. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/gg243376.pdf obviously I should have said tcp/ip instead of networking, why? I dont know ... actually I do, but if you have any idea why Im rambling you probably ... Ill stop now.
not that any of these resources match a textbook, but Im hopefully they will provide a reasonable jumping off point for discussions. Not that I know how far or deeply we will delve into anything today or at all over the course or my unemployment, but trying to provide a nerdy guide to some cs topics that everybody should understand.
I imagine we will start with some catch up and discussion of goals, but, as the boy scouts say, be prepared. Note to self, load a flash drive with this information.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
100 steps
Since it is the project Ive most recently been writing notes to myself about, my idea for a javascript RPG game.
Tentatively titled 100 steps.
More explanation is probably warranted. The start of the game in my mind was that skyrim was starting to get boring and I wanted to automate tasks, but realized that what was the point of playing if most of it was automated. So the initial idea was you create a game with a play x steps button and let the player make choices about how long to let the game run before jumping in, in my head initially, you could watch each step at different speeds and jump in right before your character dies, but that ruins the fun, if you pick too many steps you fail, with the option to revert of course, and if you keep picking the same number of steps you may eventually get through just by dumb luck, as with any rpg... keep bashing the head against the wall till you push through it, one of my favorite strategies when returning elsewhere to get an item is too much of a pain.
Some of the random notes I jotted down.
line, fills in with board, once certain visibility is reached can achieve 3d perspective. starting with single dimension steps are obviously forward or backwards, since random encounters backwards/ into already cleared area has lower chance of difficult encounter, but also less loot, only reason to go back is origin point is full regen. As the game is supposed to be automated to some degree dont want safety to be guaranteed though. once through 100 steps origin allows multi directional play, once cleared all 4 directions, get grid system, once explored full grid realization that the game is large. basically want automated level generation to allow for massive game, but ... logistically need to figure it out... obviously.
And thats the brief writeup of where the idea started in my head, Ill write more later, but want to move onto a different thing at this point, and I can because I'm funemployed.
This blog post http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/48942213058/is-javascript-fast-enough-to-write-3d-games-yet makes me hopeful the 3d dream would be possible, but its obviously not the focus till somebody makes it to the later stages of the game.
Tentatively titled 100 steps.
More explanation is probably warranted. The start of the game in my mind was that skyrim was starting to get boring and I wanted to automate tasks, but realized that what was the point of playing if most of it was automated. So the initial idea was you create a game with a play x steps button and let the player make choices about how long to let the game run before jumping in, in my head initially, you could watch each step at different speeds and jump in right before your character dies, but that ruins the fun, if you pick too many steps you fail, with the option to revert of course, and if you keep picking the same number of steps you may eventually get through just by dumb luck, as with any rpg... keep bashing the head against the wall till you push through it, one of my favorite strategies when returning elsewhere to get an item is too much of a pain.
Some of the random notes I jotted down.
line, fills in with board, once certain visibility is reached can achieve 3d perspective. starting with single dimension steps are obviously forward or backwards, since random encounters backwards/ into already cleared area has lower chance of difficult encounter, but also less loot, only reason to go back is origin point is full regen. As the game is supposed to be automated to some degree dont want safety to be guaranteed though. once through 100 steps origin allows multi directional play, once cleared all 4 directions, get grid system, once explored full grid realization that the game is large. basically want automated level generation to allow for massive game, but ... logistically need to figure it out... obviously.
random encounters,
macro editing : had idea of a why function lets you know more detail about any encounter to help automate how to best them in that level at that point. but not important, basically for the step forward function you could say take 3 steps if random battle attack until health below x use heal if 5 loops retreat, the sort of logic you love to think youve mastered in a game, and once the automation looks like its working throw a wrench in it.
world name decided by: what is your name? what is your quest? what is your favorite color?
color sets character attributes, ... use selector, rgb vals whatever. strength defense magic, generic? whatever ...
random encounters through grid, 1-100 ...
And thats the brief writeup of where the idea started in my head, Ill write more later, but want to move onto a different thing at this point, and I can because I'm funemployed.
This blog post http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/48942213058/is-javascript-fast-enough-to-write-3d-games-yet makes me hopeful the 3d dream would be possible, but its obviously not the focus till somebody makes it to the later stages of the game.
Funemployed
I'm getting older.
Quit my job due to the fact that it wasn't making me happy.
Looking for new work, but also simultaneously playing with the idea that I could build something worthwhile myself. ... but ... probably need to get into a bigger environment where I can learn and grow proactively.
Just saw this http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/ which after reading through is quite excellent. Posted it on facebook and realized nobody cared, but also realized it said to start your own blog with insights. Realized I do not currently have insights. Want to design my own RSS reader because google reader is left in the dust, and not entirely sure 'how I want it'... so its an opportunity to grow. So, Im thinking of currently using this blog as a list of articles / presentations / blogs that I am reading in my funemployment and will eventually turn that list into an aggregation tool for myself.
Unfortunately I have too many ideas, and not enough motivation, I think everybody has this problem, so a great tool would be how to help focus people so we aren't concurrently working on the same things unless working together or attempting different paths towards the same solution ... ie maximize productivity of people who want to be productive. An office space line is brought to mind, then nobody would be a janitor.... but Im specifically thinking of coding, it kind of relates to my website idea. Musicpatrons.com ... blog.musicpatrons.com has some minor info, and Ive tossed ideas out to a lot of people who agree I have some good ideas, but the basic idea is to upset the status quo which is always risky business. and getting anywhere near the music industry is an invitation for lawyers to sue you.... so Ive got all sorts of hesitation regarding it.
Question of how long to stay out of work so I can motivate to do my own things. I did finally get around to writing a simple chrome extension to have some options for reddit filtering, and I am happy with it, obviously Id like to do more, but how much scope creep should I allow myself for a simple project when there is already the reddit enhancement suite, which brings up the bigger, if Im not doing something that is so game changing as to be its own thing why am I spending time reinventing the wheel, which suggests I should go work for a company that I want to help improve their services, but I dont want to jump from company to company, although I guess that is socially acceptable for programmers to some degree, but the bigger question is, where should I get a job, want to be working on something that interests me and benefits society, which sort of points to google as I am a google fanboy and they have the highest distribution of information to the world, ... after some discussion with my friend sunday he suggested khan academy ... as education is really the only thing that matters for improving world situations, but ... education + information you know how that is ... nevermind on to the earlier next paragraph...
Other ideas Id like to work on for myself while Im out of work ... which brings up a point I will now revert to a new previous paragraph for... as youve seen that was rambling, but had a purpose.
javascript RPG,
continue working on chrome extensions
contribute to some open source projects
musicpatrons.com
RSS aggregator / reader
Ill do a writeup of the goals of each of those projects in the near future. Ive been using 750words.com to help clarify my internal thoughts, but since nobody reads my blog I may as well use this as an output to myself and at least feel like they are public ... Im a big all information should be free type of person so why hide behind a curtain in any element of my life.
Quit my job due to the fact that it wasn't making me happy.
Looking for new work, but also simultaneously playing with the idea that I could build something worthwhile myself. ... but ... probably need to get into a bigger environment where I can learn and grow proactively.
Just saw this http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/ which after reading through is quite excellent. Posted it on facebook and realized nobody cared, but also realized it said to start your own blog with insights. Realized I do not currently have insights. Want to design my own RSS reader because google reader is left in the dust, and not entirely sure 'how I want it'... so its an opportunity to grow. So, Im thinking of currently using this blog as a list of articles / presentations / blogs that I am reading in my funemployment and will eventually turn that list into an aggregation tool for myself.
Unfortunately I have too many ideas, and not enough motivation, I think everybody has this problem, so a great tool would be how to help focus people so we aren't concurrently working on the same things unless working together or attempting different paths towards the same solution ... ie maximize productivity of people who want to be productive. An office space line is brought to mind, then nobody would be a janitor.... but Im specifically thinking of coding, it kind of relates to my website idea. Musicpatrons.com ... blog.musicpatrons.com has some minor info, and Ive tossed ideas out to a lot of people who agree I have some good ideas, but the basic idea is to upset the status quo which is always risky business. and getting anywhere near the music industry is an invitation for lawyers to sue you.... so Ive got all sorts of hesitation regarding it.
Question of how long to stay out of work so I can motivate to do my own things. I did finally get around to writing a simple chrome extension to have some options for reddit filtering, and I am happy with it, obviously Id like to do more, but how much scope creep should I allow myself for a simple project when there is already the reddit enhancement suite, which brings up the bigger, if Im not doing something that is so game changing as to be its own thing why am I spending time reinventing the wheel, which suggests I should go work for a company that I want to help improve their services, but I dont want to jump from company to company, although I guess that is socially acceptable for programmers to some degree, but the bigger question is, where should I get a job, want to be working on something that interests me and benefits society, which sort of points to google as I am a google fanboy and they have the highest distribution of information to the world, ... after some discussion with my friend sunday he suggested khan academy ... as education is really the only thing that matters for improving world situations, but ... education + information you know how that is ... nevermind on to the earlier next paragraph...
Other ideas Id like to work on for myself while Im out of work ... which brings up a point I will now revert to a new previous paragraph for... as youve seen that was rambling, but had a purpose.
javascript RPG,
continue working on chrome extensions
contribute to some open source projects
musicpatrons.com
RSS aggregator / reader
Ill do a writeup of the goals of each of those projects in the near future. Ive been using 750words.com to help clarify my internal thoughts, but since nobody reads my blog I may as well use this as an output to myself and at least feel like they are public ... Im a big all information should be free type of person so why hide behind a curtain in any element of my life.
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