Advice
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On Taking Action
Many years ago I started reading and taking advice from a dating guru. One of the most important things I got out of the material was the frame of mind that being the guy who actually does things and leads by example is critical. I changed from the guy who doesn’t dance to the one…
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Flâneuring
A term made popular by the French Poet Beaudelaire has been on my mind for the last month. Flâneuring is when you take an idle stroll. It’s a practice that that I learned about from reading vagabonding by Rolf Potts. In the world of travel, flâneuring is a way to break out of the tourist traps and find…
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Learning How to Learn
My recent experience with daily freecoding taught me a lot about learning programming and about how you learn new skills. There were several types of freecoding sessions that I did and each of them proved useful for different reasons. I had a handful of memorized programs one of which was to program a deck of…
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Lessons From 253 Days of Consecutive Freecoding
My recent camping vacation is what broke an epic 253 day streak of github commits. Overwhelmingly this activity was a daily practice of freecoding to see first hand just how effective it could be at getting better at programming. Freecoding is based on a writing technique called free-writing which is supposed to get the juices…
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Why You Should Find Time to Play
Play is one of the more undervalued activities we can undertake as an adult, yet it is one that differentiates many of the worlds top performers from the rest of us. Playtime could be considered to be the pinnacle of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When you are intrinsically motivated and enjoy what you’re doing you…
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Book Reports
For the last couple weeks I have been trying to catch up on my goal for reading 36 books this year. Progress so far has been good and I have gotten through a decent backlog of books that I have wanted to read. With the new morning routine of reading before the day starts I…
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How to Maintain Momentum
The main lesson from a handful of recent books that I have read has been focus on fewer, more important things if you really want to make progress. Less but better. And that the best way to maintain the momentum on the projects you do want to take on is to make small steps and…
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New Bike and Fractured Rib
This weekend I picked up a balance bike for Ada to start playing with. These Strider bikes seem like a good way to get a child used to biking and gaining balance skills. It sort of takes the place of ever needing to go with a tricycle or a bike with training wheels. Once they…
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Asset Allocations
Late last week my RRSP transfer from mutual funds into Questrade completed. It feels as if I lucked out in that the 5 worst days of the year on the market happened while the cheque was in the mail to move money. Trying to devise a strategy for investing that is both safe, has the…
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Why You Should Build Your Own Tools
Something has happened in the manufacturing world that is nearly irreparable. As America moved production to China and downsized factories to realize the profit gains from low wage Chinese workers it also decimated an entire skill set from the national tool belt. When a factory tools up a new line to produce a new iPhone, sneakers…
