The power of ignoring mainstream news
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." - Thomas Jefferson
The Markdown Mindset
Over the last year, I have moved all my non-code writing to Markdown format. I don’t even have Microsoft Word installed on my laptop anymore. Here’s why:
My eBook build process and some PDF, EPUB and MOBI tips
In case you missed it, last month I self-published an eBook about Ruby internals called Ruby Under a Microscope . To date I’ve sold over 600 copies - thanks everyone! I’ve never written anything so ambitious before, and I’m grateful for your support. I hope it’s been a fun read, and that you come away with a better…
Thoughts on Growing Old
You spend the first part of your life trying to be old, trying to convince everyone that you're older than you are, that you're just as good...
Where the fuck is my Ari Gold?
Software development is its own unique thing. It is not a profession that can be directly equated to any other. This tends to frustrate people who try to understand the profession. This is true even for software developers, who would like an established model to follow. This is why you see some software companies run…
Counting Pullups
I'm a big fan of my Fitbit pedometer because it does most of its work without any interaction. I clip it onto my pocket and it counts my steps and flights of stairs as I walk throughout the day, then automatically, wirelessly uploads the data to Fitbit's website whenever I'm within range of its USB dongle plugged into…
What my 11 year old's Stanford course taught me about online education
[This post was originally published at Forbes.com on 7th May 2012] My 11 year old son just took a course at Stanford. That has a nice r...
Why I stopped working on the Bongard Problems
Please note: this text was written in the summer of 2007, and explains why I, the author, took a long respite from working on my research topics, after the summer of 2006. At the time when I wrote this, and up until around 2011, I had really stopped my research — so the title was correct up to then. Later, after 2011…
Let the adventurous journey begin: Passive Income
I decided to give passive income a shot and I'm going to write about my experiences (yep, like almost everybody these days). This will be a long term experiment and I'm really curious whether it will work out as planned :) I'm new to this area, so any feedback will be greatly apprecia
Get Disciplined, Not Motivated
There's a lot of problems with simple motivation: Motivation is fleeting Motivation comes and goes however it wants. It might not last to the end of the week, end of the day, or even the end of blog post you just read. It's fleeting. Motivation is situational Motivation is based…
Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?
Your life is the best story! Just start your blog today!
Graham’s Guide to Learning Scala
From The Archives: This article is one of the all-time most popular posts from my previous blog Graham Hacking Scala. I thought it worth updating and re-printing it here. It’s a pretty widely-accepted view that, as a programmer, learning new … Continue reading →
This white powder will kill me one day
There are lots of bad things that you can insert into your system through various ways that all seem to be represented in physical form as white powder. Heroin, Cocaine, various other chemicals that people will consume in order to alter their state of consciousness. I hate drugs, with a passion. I’ve seen up close in…
My Education in Machine Learning via Cousera, A Review So Far
As of today I’ve completed my fifth course at Coursera, all but one being directly related to Machine Learning. The fact that you can now take classes given by many of most well known researchers i…
How we gave colors names
“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter in…
Want to create a new habit? Get ready to break it.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle
Your Goals Are Holding You Back
This post was republished on Lifehacker. I just started my junior year at Penn. Aside from a newly developed disdain for the freshmen I see bumbling their
Learning to Learn
I believe the key thing that has helped me to become successful and will continue to do so, is my ability to learn how to learn about a subject and self educate. When you take ownership for the learning process, you start putting knowledge into action.