Japan is amazing - you should visit it, especially if you love the culture. I've had a misconception that navigating Japan's subway would be a nightmare, in fact it couldn't be farther from the truth. My one and only problem was finding a ticket station to get my ICOCA card (you should get it too btw, or a similar one) in Osaka (KIX) airport and finding a station; and I've managed it, so you will too. Believe me. Apart from that, there were some misunderstandings to where the tracks that I needed were, but it happened only once or twice. Considering I didn't know much and I don't know Japanese, it was extremely easy. There are trains running from major airports to the center of major cities (and the other way around). In general you can treat any train station in Japan as a metro station - there isn't much of a difference. Think of it as one big system. And don't worry: there are different companies operating these stations and lines, but it doesn't matter in the slightest. I wish other countries would use the same approach for train transportation, it makes going around a breeze. I've used Google Maps to get around - and it was very reliable, it knows which trains and exits you need to take pretty good. About the cards: You should 100% get a transportation card, such as ICOCA, SUICA or PASMO. This is Japan's card to pay for metro and trains, it covers 99% of your transportation needs (apart from shinkansen and long distance trains). You can even use it to pay in shops and restaurants (almost everywhere...). I haven't used my credit card once in Japan. And as far as I know, you can get a virtual card on an iPhone. One more amazing thing is that every Japan train or metro station has free and clean toilets, extremely useful for tourists. Fun fact: some train/metro stations even have ice cream vending machines: a relief on a hot day. There are drinks and coffee vending machines everywhere, as you might already know.
After some time of going to the gym, I've started to skip the treadmill after the workout. I have better things to do, I thought. I'll just run to where I need to be. How wrong I was! After a workout, just hop on a treadmill for a sec. Usually, you'll see you have lots and lots of energy left. And then try this trick to stay longer: If treadmills in your gym show calories burned and time, try to keep walking / running till you reach closest round number. For example: If I'm at 90 calories, I'll stay till I reach 100. Then, let's say the time is 18:28, I'll keep going for two more minutes. Do this at least once.
Although I've dropped out in my first year, my honest advice is: - Learn everything, but do just enough to pass - Also learn on your own time what YOU think is important, make pet projects, build portfolio - Work in parallel to study, if a good opportunity is available, otherwise focus on learning - Network, meet peers - Find more interesting courses / groups, switch courses if you think a better one is available - If there's an opportunity to be an exchange student in a more interesting university or even different country, take it - Try not to drop out, but if a better opportunity (e.g. career) comes, take it All of this changes if a university is not free. Any loan should be thought through, student loan is no exception: will you be able to afford it? But that's up to you to decide. The most value university provided to me was meeting new people and making good friends.
Our life mostly consists of habits, good and bad. Habits can come and go, but some of them have proven so essential, I'll call them my non-negotiables. There's a famous saying: Sow a thought and you reap an action; Sow an act and you reap a habit; Sow a habit and you reap a character; Sow a character and you reap a destiny. Over time, I understood that even the smallest daily actions—the ones we commit to even when no one is watching—compound into a better body we have, clearer mind and so on. Only after starting, sticking and stacking these habits, I've started to see a cleaner picture what I wish to become. Habits, and then goals based on those habits act as anchors even if we're struggling. So here's my list of non-negotiable habits: 1. Gym It makes more sense to say "exercise", but that wouldn't be the truth. Gym, which you pay money for, which you have to go in at specific day and time, where a coach is waiting for you, works way better than just "exercise". I've signed up to lose weight initially—with time realized on my own experience that it's helpful beyond that. Regular exercise improves mental clarity, sex drive, makes you more resilient, happier, stronger (duh). I would also add that gym can act as a stepping stone to start building other good habits. It teaches you that results take time and effort, and getting out of habit is costly. Getting results is hard, losing them is easy. At times you'll be weaker, others - full of energy and unstoppable. But it doesn't matter: consistency wins motivation and fluctuation. 2. Cooking Healthy Food & Dieting Despite food delivery services are available almost everywhere at the tap of a button, there are huge benefits to cook your own food. Money is just one small aspect of it. I'm not a professional cook and also I'm lazy: so my food is simple and nutritious. It's also easier to maintain diet: You cook for yourself. If you make yourself fast food, you're conscious of it. If you order it, well, that's it. That's what someone else cooked, not me. Yes, you may hate yourself for ordering fast food, but you didn't put time and effort into cooking it. Food delivery apps are designed to make you choose and order fast, and they often (always?) promote fast food. Choosing and ordering ready-made food is not the same as cooking it. Did I mention that home-cooked meals are tastier? Let me guess: it has to do with the effort you've put in. If you get into the habit of cooking, you'll realize that ordering it in fact takes MORE time. Food delivered to you loses its taste and quality fast, so you're incentivized to order daily, which... takes time. You'll get bored of one restaurant, you'll have to search for another one. Contrast that with simple cooking: once a week. You also have to wait for the delivery guy, answer the phone, pick your order, unpack it. Once I started working out, it became obvious that gym wasn't enough to achieve results that I want. It's proven that losing weight is calories in, calories out. What You Eat Is What You Get. Your situation might be different and you may not need dieting, but: What if you became sick and your activity would go down? What if you've stopped moving? Exercise and diet go hand in hand, they're useful together: If you were only dieting and now started eating junk food - game over. If you were only exercising and became too lazy - game over. If you were doing both, but one of them fails, it's bad as it is. But at least it's not a complete fuck-up. 3. Writing There's a saying that reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. I agree, but I would say that writing is even more important. Reading is passive, writing is active. One might argue that one is impossible without the other, and they may be right. But how many people do you know that do write? Even if we count the ones that don't publish their thoughts, I bet it will be a smaller number than an already miniscule number of readers. I don't even remember my initial motivation behind writing, nowadays I just do. It helps me reflect and organize my thoughts. Even in the age of AI, it is (and will be) an important and high value skill. What did LLMs learn from? Writing. If you're a writer - you have to write about something, you have to write. And since you have that need, you'll start to get ideas on what to write about. And those ideas will spawn new ideas. 4. Quality Sleep Humans need food, water, oxygen and sleep. It's our recharging mechanisms. I've started to see the benefits of quality sleep only after experiencing horrible insomnia, difficulty waking and getting up AND following a specific, strict sleeping schedule. For me it's bedtime at midnight and getting up at 8, for you it might be different. But don't overlook consistency. You'll have to have a long sleep experiment, where you'll stick to a sleep schedule for quite some time, and you'll understand. Even on the weekends. Every. Single. Day. Otherwise, keep being tired and sleepy, I can't help you. 5. Walking Walking gives us space for self-reflection, makes us absorb Vitamin D, breathe fresh air for a change and stretch our mind (lol), body and legs. It makes us discover new places and our mind wander. It's not the same as gym.
Here's my fresh hot take: Companies swear by closed-source solutions (developed in-house, or bought) will fall behind in terms of DX, speed of development, quality, unless invest HEAVILY, and I mean really HEAVILY into in-house AI or pivot to using open source. How soon an in-house AI is going to help me rewrite a UI kit component or some part of the system? Sure, I can probably try to feed this stuff to an offline LLM. But it takes time and effort to feed it data with questionable results. By leveraging a popular open-source project, you can get a solution for your problem in mere seconds with ChatGPT or other LLM. The future favors openness.
We often set goals to improve, but rarely we acknowledge where we're actively avoiding growth. These "Anti-Goals" — areas we neglect or resist changing — can hold us back just as much as failing to achieve goals. Identifying them helps us confront inertia and make intentional choices. Besides tracking progress, document where you're actively avoiding improvement. Try this prompt with AI and answer honestly: "Ask me questions to understand my "Anti-Goals": areas of my life where I'm avoiding improvement" Here's my brutally honest "Anti-Goals" list: * Not building a product → Regret, unfulfilled potential * Stuck in career → Stagnation * Not trying new hobbies and sports → Lack of joy * Not meeting new people → Loneliness, missed opportunities * Not walking 10k steps daily → Lower energy, health risks * Not tidying my room → Embarrassment, no guests Does it resonate with you? It was a useful exercise for me, despite I know all of this already; Having a clear vision (or anti vision) may make you act on it. What's one Anti-Goal you've been ignoring? This one is on you - if you want change.
Western vloggers, pop figures treat cold showers like a challenge. This is a part of my life - once a year for a few days or a week. There's a period of maintenance (usually in summer), when there's no hot water on tap. I could've boiled a kettle of hot water or even installed a water heater. But I don't care. I accept this, somehow like it and even appreciate it. Yes, I'm also lazy and so on. But the fact that I like it is true. I don't do have the will to take cold showers myself - I do it only during this period. I like to believe that this has some benefits, like: Hedonic Contrast, "Detox" & Delayed Gratification: Living without some wonderful and familiar thing for some time Health: apparently it boosts circulation, reduces inflammation, enhances mood, improves immunity, triggers endorphins You can try to apply this "abstinence" to other aspects of your life.
Lately I've been more reflective, pro-active... Well, I'll stop bragging now. What I mean by that is: notes were and are very important for me. Previously, I mostly used Notion. I like its structure and page nesting, but it was too slow for my taste and had its quirks. Now - I embraced total chaos. If you used Google Keep - you know what I mean. At work I use Apple Notes on MacOS (and I've used it on an iPhone when I had it). It's a complete opposite of Google Keep - it's pretty clean (it's not perfect too, but not bad). I wish I could use that, but I can't - I'm on Android/Windows. So I'm pretty much stuck with taming this wild beast of an app (let's hope Google doesn't kill it or break it). And it actually works. Despite how it looks - like a messy room of a "creative" art student. Still better than trying to use Saved Messages, (this is just insanity), though I haven't given up that habit to jot down quick notes. Sometimes I de-load the stuff from Google Keep to a Trello board, but otherwise Trello doesn't quite work for day to day stuff. I'm not in any way saying that Google Keep is king of productivity. What I mean that it surprisingly works despite its flaws. It's crazy simple too. Google Keep forces me to push my ideas fast - turn a note into a blog post or a tweet or delete it. Same with everything else - act on it or archive it (out of sight, out of mind). Also, I haven't found a fast, bug-free, cross-platform Notion alternative (it should also be cheap or better yet, free). Evernote is probably dying, in coma or on life support OneNote was created by aliens or lizards (Bill Gates?) Obsidian has paid Sync and no web version (but it's kinda cool either way, I admit)
...or an "Everything Must Go" Challenge I'm moving out soon (or so I've planned). I'll either need to throw a lot of stuff away or take it with me. I hate heavy bags, and I already have a lot of stuff to move. So for some reason I really enjoy this time - Use It or Lose It. Seeing as the amount of stuff around me decreases, an minimalism and order increases (control freak much?). I've had a stock of cereals big enough to feed a small army or resolve a humanitarian crisis in Africa. I don't regret being stocked up - it's a hedge against inflation (or a sudden crisis, like pandemic or whatever). I'd better eat what I have in the fridge and on the shelf. Coming up with ideas what to cook from what I have is challenging, but interesting. I'd love to buy some groceries - but I intentionally delay it for several other reasons. I'm leaving on the weekend - it doesn't make sense for fresh products to become... not fresh. Saving money - or at least delaying spending; best case - I'll shop after the move. Stops overspending - I'm not perfect; there's stuff I would rather not consume; or buy in less quantities (as needed), to avoid wasting food. Moving made me clean my house - this made me realize how much trash I have just laying around; And other stuff I don't even use (mostly clothes). It's not the first time, but every time it makes me think. Well, here's for better saving, spending, utilizing, minima...lizing :)
As I started working, I began to wonder what would happen when I'll stop. What if I'm fired or retired? I know for a fact that pension is small - just enough to get by. Would you want to live like that? Okay, let's imagine that I'll move to the richest country and I'll be eligible for a good pension. It still won't be enough. And by the way, who promised you that you'll have pension (or universal basic income)? Why do you think having (and relying on pension) is fair? Life is unfair and future is uncertain. Don't rely on promises. Am I saying that I'd prefer not to receive pension or that pensions are bad? No. I just don't expect it. The only money you can expect is the one you make yourself: by work, business, investment, saving and so on. In USSR in the 90s, people's savings were lost. Why do you think it won't happen again? Why do you think it won't happen with pensions? The key is to diversify.
Getting out of good habits feels bad. Since I've started going to the gym seriously and my coach suggested a diet for me, I've started cooking my meals myself. This requires cookware and oven. Most hotels don't have any of that. Not every AirBnB has that. I also probably won't cook myself much while traveling: I am exploring 24/7. Traveling Sabotaged (or stagnated) My Weight Loss (a little bit, but noticeable). I could've lost more weight and build more muscle. But at the same time, making deliberate breaks means you'll be less likely to randomly quit, yearning for the gym / home-cooked food. It won't work for everyone, though: those with a weak will will quit. It isn't very easy to find healthy food in restaurants, usually there are too many carbs for my diet, and not enough protein, meat and so on. It's also more expensive. This tension makes you realize that you miss healthy, cheaper food that you've cooked yourself, for yourself. And makes you terrified about how you lived before. You (and I) should try our best to eat healthy and exercise even in subpar conditions, of course.
I used to scroll past Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books, thinking the titles alone told the whole story. The Black Swan? Antifragile? Fooled by Randomness? "Yeah, yeah, life's unpredictable — got it," I'd shrug. Then my friend started discussing ideas presented in these books and I became interested. They were right. Taleb's books aren't just about acknowledging uncertainty; they're about rewiring how you see risk, power, and resilience. Once I started reading, I couldn't stop — I've revisited them multiple times, and each read uncovers something new. # The Turkey Problem (And Its Sneaky Inverse) You may have heard the classic turkey problem: A turkey is fed every day by a butcher, growing more confident that life is safe and predictable. On Thanksgiving, the turkey's trust is shattered in an instant. Lesson: Stability is an illusion. What hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't. But Taleb flips this around — the inverse turkey problem: The butcher, after years of smooth operations, assumes he's in control. Then, one day, a turkey fights back. Or a virus wipes out the flock. Or society revolts against factory farming. You get the idea. The powerful ones are often more fragile than they realize. Their dominance relies on predictability — until it doesn't. Why This Matters Beyond Turkeys This isn't just about poultry. It's about: Dictators who think they're invincible — until a protest topples them. Corporations (like Kodak) that ignore disruption until it's too late. Hedge funds that profit for years, then blow up overnight (2008, anyone?). Taleb's point? Systems that appear unshakable are often vulnerable to risk. True resilience (antifragility) means benefiting from shocks, not just surviving them. # The Lindy Effect vs. Black Swan: A False Contradiction? At first glance, Taleb's ideas seem to clash: Black Swan: The future is dominated by unpredictable, high-impact events. Lindy Effect: The longer something has survived, the longer it's likely to endure (e.g., ancient texts, recipes, traditions). Resolution: Lindy doesn't predict stability; it highlights proven resilience to past shocks. A 100-year-old farm (Lindy Effect) could still collapse from a new virus (Black Swan). Lindy is about duration, not invincibility. # Antifragility in Practice: Food, Failures, and Minority Rule Taleb's Via Negativa — strength through subtraction, not addition: Lindy Foods: Cheese, wine, and farmer's markets endure because they've survived centuries of trial and error (no need for "optimized" industrial food - Via Negativa). Minority Rule: Kosher/halal diets dominate not because most people follow them, but because inflexible minorities force systemic adaptation (e.g., all food becomes halal-compliant to avoid losing customers). Empiricism Over Theory: "Fat Tony" trusts a grandmother's recipe more than a lab's "nutritional science" - time-tested > theoretically optimal. # Survivorship Bias: The Invisible Graveyard Why "success studies" are often nonsense: Primary Bias: Studying Steve Jobs to emulate his success. Secondary Bias: Ignoring the 10,000 others with identical traits (e.g., stubbornness, turtlenecks) who failed. Taleb's Warning: Copying survivors without seeing the corpses leads to reverse-engineering luck into false patterns. # How I Started Applying This to My Life After Antifragile, I began looking through this lens on different aspects of life - such as relationships or self-image and so on. Example: Shyness is Fragile Avoiding social friction = stagnation. Fear of judgment = flimsy self-worth. Antifragile Fixes: Exposure Therapy: Lean into discomfort (speak up, risk awkwardness). Skin In The Game: Stand by your opinions — public scrutiny sharpens them. Barbell Strategy: Balance safe bets (deep 1-on-1 connections) with bold moves (public speaking). Avoid the "middle" (passive social media consumption). Relationships, Too Fragile: Avoid conflict, fear betrayal. Antifragile: Let arguments reveal weak points (like stress-testing a bridge). Fragile relationships avoid conflict, rely on predictability, and collapse under betrayal. Treat Conflict as Information: Arguments and disagreements are stressors that reveal flaws—use them to strengthen bonds (like bones under pressure). Redundancy: Have multiple social circles so no single betrayal ruins you Lindy Effect: Prioritize relationships that have lasted — they're more likely to endure future stressors. Why Taleb Hates Pinker's Optimism (Stephen Pinker, the author of "Better Angels Of Our Nature", which postulates that violence has declined over centuries) Taleb's critique of data-driven progress: Ignoring Black Swans: Pinker's stats ignore past shocks like World Wars, we should think that they will happen again Fragility of Modernity: Centralized systems (global supply chains, finance) appear efficient but are Black Swan factories. Moral Hazard: "Progress" often relies on hidden risks (e.g., debt bubbles, antibiotic overuse). The Best Part? The Questions Left Unanswered Taleb's books don't just hand you answers — they make you ponder. For instance: - Can you really "anti-fragilize" everything, or are some things destined to break? Should everything be anti-fragile? - How do you balance Lindy's wisdom with inevitability of Black Swans? I won't spoil the exploration. If you're curious, dive in. Fair warning: His writing is abrasive, arrogant, and absolutely worth it. You'll disagree with him, rant at the pages... and then catch yourself rethinking everything. Taleb's work isn't about predicting the future — it's about spotting who's lying (to others or themselves) by ignoring fragility. The turkey and butcher both die; the wine and the barbell investor survive. Which side are you on?
As a teen, looking at peers which families could afford New Balance shoes, I wanted the same. And not just fake Nikes. The real ones. As I became employed, I've started to buy top brand stuff. But a decade later I realized how stupid I was. I was buying top sneakers only to realize the cheapest ones do just fine: same lifespan as expensive ones, just as comfortable. Yes, there are exceptions, and more expensive ones usually look better. I was devastated when my Adidas shoes become unwearable and unrepairable, despite my best efforts. On the other hand, I don't care if my cheap shoes become broken, I'll throw them away in an instant. Disposable stuff is easy to throw away if broken when travelling or moving. You wouldn't part as easily with your favorite pair, despite it being unrepairable. Expensive things create invisible burdens; Repairing a pricy thing will be more expensive itself. Sometimes "flexing" the cheapest shoes feels even better than shoes that cost 10x more (literally...). Wearing them to places where people dress up or flex makes me laugh inside. It may even make an impression that I'm broke or crazy, and I'll happily take that and see nothing wrong, thank you. After my expensive wireless vacuum cleaner (wireless! rolling my eyes at myself...) broke, I've bought the cheapest wired no-name brand vacuum cleaner which looks like a plastic toy but it turned out to be the most powerful one I ever had; It is THE easiest to clean up once full, it is so simple that nothing could break... The Freedom of Owning "Disposable" Gear I've already posted about how I fear taking my Olympus OM-2 camera out. I have no problem taking Zenit TTL (which is almost free) anywhere. Does expensive T-shirt last longer than a thrifted one? Unlikely. I've bought flagship phones till I realized there are options 2-4x times cheaper which accomplish 99% of tasks just as good. Like a Nothing Phone (1) - its only flaw for me was camera. Buying flagships phones only to sell and downgrade later. Sometimes even flagship phones have serious flaws (like a small battery). It's cheaper and I don't have to "baby" it, in fear of it being stolen or broken. If I add up all the money I've overspent, it will be a small fortune. When I saw it I was terrified. Try this yourself. Don't get me wrong, sometimes there is stuff too cheap to be usable. And there are things to pay premium for.
After a fun week, I've measured myself and was dissatisfied, since my top goal is weight loss. I'm not a big drinker myself. Drinking a lot of alcohol makes me sick. And so I don't often drink, and not much. Only occasionally. But after thinking about how it impacts my weight loss, I started to think. Especially considering that drinking too much beer for already an overweight male can be bad. So I researched a bit and come to the conclusion that I should try to limit my beer drinking to 1 beer per week at most, preferably 1 beer a month if possible. And then I realized that for three days straight I drank 5 beers in total. It felt like nothing, but the scales have a different opinion. I've been to a bar meetup where I drank just one beer; A dinner with friends where I drank 2 beers; And I went to a club, where I also drank 2 beers. No wonder I'm stuck on losing weight. If you have similar goals, enjoy your beer or whatever: be my guest, but try to count how much you drank. From financial, sobriety and health standpoint. I could've reduced this number to 3 without ANY negative consequences. I could've even went to a club sober: I need zero alcohol to dance to good music, so 2. And then I could've find a way to go to 1 (without giving up any socialization of course). This doesn't mean that I want to give up any amount of alcohol forever (although...) It's about making better choices and setting priorities. It doesn't mean the fun is over (now that I'm an adult). Now I am wise enough to know the consequences and the price of it. An interesting experiment I should try is to postpone drinking. Bars are perceived like the drinking place. But it doesn't have to be. It's often easy (and maybe even cheaper) to buy an alcoholic drink than not. But it shouldn't stop you and me from resisting. When working out and lifting, I wish, no, I pray I could be stronger and better, to struggle less. So I should hold that thought when thinking about drinks or junk food. I'll cheat though, because what is life if you can't enjoy things? But cheat carefully and mindfully.
I've been using savings accounts and deposits for a long time. Usually, they have monthly capitalization. But I've heard that there are some savings accounts which offer daily capitalization. This seemed like an interesting idea: I thought that seeing the savings grow day by day would help me save more (and enjoy it). And it turned out to be true. Finally, I've found an offer for high yield savings account with daily capitalization. And it forced me to put every penny possible into it. Which leads to more thoughtful spending and more rational money management. Of course, you should choose the best yield account, regardless of capitalization frequency. But seeing small daily gains creates a "snowball effect" of motivation. After a bit of time you see a reasonable amount of money saved. One more important thing that such accounts help with is seeing how much money you can set aside. And in my case, I can transfer money back and forth, which is more flexible than a deposit.
- Are you a top model? - If yes, do you think it will always be like this, without applied effort? - If you don't look like an athlete, why? - Can you climb a mountain or you'd get out of breath? - Are you waiting for a doctor’s warning to finally take action? - Can you honestly say you’re proud of your energy levels? - Would you be able to lift your kids? - Are you exercising to failure? - Why not? I feel like an American Psycho writing this, so here's a fitting dialogue: Patrick Bateman: I'm on a diet. Jean: What, you're kidding, right? You look great... so fit... and thin. Patrick Bateman: Well, you can always be thinner... look better. And what is he wrong about here? Run faster. Lift heavier. Look better. Live longer and happier. Sign up for the gym right now. If you don't know how to exercise, hire a coach. Hire a coach even if you know how to: most likely your technique will be imperfect.
The first question you should ask yourself right now is whether you're currently healthy. Did you sleep well? Do you have enough energy throughout the day? Do you have excess fat? Did all your muscles disappear due to lack of training? How's your heart rate? Do you have shortness of breath? Do you have teeth problems? The list goes on... This may be obvious, but only with age I've realized that health should be top priority. Health affects everything: Healthy you - good results Healthy you - feeling strong and secure Healthy you - less spending Healthy you - higher salary Healthy you - help others And it all leads to more opportunities. This is an extrapolation, but it's true. If you have some health problems, focus on them hard. Health can be restored to a degree, but it gets expensive the longer we delay. Your rest isn't as good as it could be if you were healthy. Your work isn't good if you aren't rested. The work is subpar -> longer hours needed to do the same task -> less time for rest. And the cycle repeats, leading to worse and worse results, until you don't want to get out of bed. You need prime health to enjoy rest. You need fulfilling rest to do great work. You need great work results to rest freely. When you've done a good job - you don't even have thoughts to check work during downtime, which leads to good rest. You don't hesitate and take all that time for a healthy rest. When you've rested enough, you bite into work like a hungry wolf, chopping tasks with the speed of light.
For the last dozen of months, I've been using AI as a doctor, shrink, marketer, ghostwriter, coach and so on. It helps find information way faster than searching internet for it. I've used it extensively to reflect on my struggles, it helped me tremendously: I couldn't have imagined that a couple of hours with AI could replace 10 sessions with psychotherapists. You can ask questions directly related to your problem without any fear or boundaries. It helped me understand emotional and relationship intricacies. I often use it to ask medical questions. Pop med articles are way generic and not specific to your case. With time, I've started to use AI to ask questions I never knew I could get answers to. Sometimes, there are topics that you can't even just Google! You can even ask AI to answer you without spoilers, if you need that. AI helped me understand a handful of concepts described in books even better. You can ask questions nobody thought of before. You can connect wild and unrelated ideas and get a new perspective. You're able to ask AI for a 7 day blog growth strategy. Try to even keep up with all of this! Not to mention that I can ask AI to write code in languages I'm not proficient at. And everything changed even more when I started to use prompts and craft them myself. These often lead to more and more ideas. I've stumbled upon a prompt that helped me get an idea which was laying on the surface, but for some reason I didn't even think about. I even made a prompt to make me prompts: it works better for complex tasks than just asking it directly. Here it is: "can you give me a prompt for ChatGPT to be my prompt assistant which goal is to help me generate prompts for ChatGPT to act as a specific agent?" You can also subscribe to my Telegram channel, "Ask LLM", where I post the best prompts. It's clear to me now that there's a whole new world of opportunities, thanks to AI. Whether we'll reach singularity, that's up to debate. But what's certain is that we can and should use AI to our advantage.
When starting my coder journey, I've struggled with understand what I could make. My first language was Pascal (I was learning it in school). And like with many languages - all you can do with them is make programs that have no graphical interface. All interaction you have is asking the user to type in something and print something back. Everything changed when I tried JavaScript. It's easy to start. You don't even have to install anything. You have a browser? You can use it's console to write code and run it. JavaScript is the easiest language to make something interactive. Yes, you'll need a little bit of HTML, but only a bit. Just add a simple button and make it call a function by clicking it. You're already making a user interface. After that, the options are limitless. I don't even need to tell you that it's used everywhere: from startups to banks. Every website you interact with has JavaScript code. It's easy to find a job, even though there are many candidates for a Frontend Developer. And you can climb as high as you want with it. But you don't have to stick to JavaScript forever. Once you understand one language, learning another becomes way easier. It's always possible to switch. Yes, it has its quirks. But after many years, it's still my go to language.
Stuck in a rut? Have no energy? The paradoxical thing is, that to get out of that state, despite having no energy, you need to apply some effort and do something. And once you do that, each time you'll feel a little bit better.
I've found out that no matter how I dislike strict, maybe even extreme regimes, they work wonders for me. Waking up at 8-9, going to bed at around 00:00. No matter how I like to stay for longer, waking up early keeps me in check. Could I sleep for longer? Probably, but my body tends to stay up for longer and so it doesn't work out anyways. Waking up early means I'll be tired at 00:00 and fall asleep easily. Is it boring? Yes. Piss off. Having breakfast at 10:00 or earlier, but it's best to wait a bit after waking up, but never skipping it. Maybe having lunch, and dining at 17:00 tops. It seems that I've been intermittent fasting or something like that for about half a year without even knowing. It helps with my weight loss plan: I can tolerate hunger in the evenings, and some literature suggests there may be evidence to support this approach. Early dinner also works nicely with an evening gym: working out on a full stomach doesn't work out, and I know for a fact that I'm weaker in the mornings. And the rare exceptions from these rules only make me more sure that it's the right approach and help me follow this regime further.
The prices are rising up globally, and with that, the cost of living does too. I've been thinking about buying a house or getting a mortgage for a long time, but only recently realized that I don't even know how much money I'll have in 5 or 10 years. Sure, it's impossible to predict the future, and some might that this isn't even worth doing. But I disagree. My personal calculations shocked me, to be honest, and I think my predictions are not overly pessimistic or optimistic. This realization will be sitting in a back of my mind, if I'll be tempted to spend too much.
I've had a pre-planned vacations, but something else captured my mind, so much so that I've thought about cancelling these vacations and spending the time on the other thing. Good that I didn't! The other thing is a worthy thing to do for me, but that doesn't mean I should've sacrificed my plans. One thing I've found useful is to go with the flow. Board the booked plane, and see what happens next. The other, is to think that the planned stuff already happened, or imagine rewinding the tape (or calendar) further just after the planned stuff has happened. That happened, now what? For me in this case, I've realized that I can do the other thing after my planned vacation, and it will be just fine. Does timing really matter for that other thing? If it doesn't and it's not the most important thing in the world, just go with the flow. There are exceptions for this rule, sure. If something more important (or interesting) comes up, screw the plans. It also may be that by ignoring this other thing, the motivation will go away, or something even more urgent comes up. But if the motivation goes away, maybe it wasn't that important after all? The fact is, we don't know all that for sure, and we do know what we planned to do.
Following up on my previous posts, I'm on track on my goal. Since that time (about a year ago), I've lost 20 KG from a hundred kilos. And I've lost 35 KG in two years in total. It's 07.04.2025 today. And 10 KG yet to lose.
My use case for this is: When I'm flying or travelling by train, my mind often wanders. The brain starts to generate ideas and questions. And on most flights, as well as trains there's no internet access to google the answers or ask ChatGPT or DeepSeek. I've found the following apps for Android: Private AI, Pocket Pal, Llamao They do really work without internet. Yes, these LLMs are not as robust as ChatGPT or DeepSeek. But they can still be useful. Just be mindful that they may be wrong due to lack of information on the topic.
Plan, get screwed, re-evaluate and plan again Recently I've written about vacation planning and why I think it is important. But sometimes plans get shaken. We change our minds, things happen. But still. Plans tend to have weight. And it can be a good or a bad thing. Good thing because we can weigh plans compared to upcoming events and routines. A bad thing because we may stick to the plans even though a better opportunity presented itself. A plan is a decision. In my opinion, a plan is a thing that includes steps to act upon in future. E.g. plane tickets is a part of a plan of a trip. These can (and maybe should) be refundable, so plans stay flexible, yes. But still, tickets should be booked, reserved. Otherwise your "plans" (that only exist in your mind) may get obliterated by: - your own laziness - laziness of others - price hikes - poor memory Money on the line adds weight to plans. Plans are the backbone of our future life. You can count on them You can fall back on them. You can change them. You can bend them. You can CANCEL them. You can invite people to planned trips. You can weigh them in contrast to other stuff. You can even ignore them. One more thought is that plans can drift... on their own. A plane has been rescheduled, delayed, a doctor moved an appointment due to illness, etc. Not having a plan is not a plan. Sorry for that truism, but it cracked me.
What does it mean to finish a task? Who must finish it? These seem like obvious questions. People often think that writing code, adding tests, sending for code review is enough. But there are still steps before it ships to production. Developers think that code reviewer will merge their task and release manager will release it. But what happens if people will just forget to merge it? What if they forget to merge it, but will move the task to the next column? The task will "fall on the floor". It will be lost and forgotten. It may even have a DONE status in issue tracker. But in reality it will never ship to production. Who is responsible for it? Code reviewer? QA engineer? Release manager? Team lead? They are all responsible, but for specific stages of issue's lifecycle. What happens if it was the last day of work of a code reviewer and he forgot to merge the task? Let's imagine a team lead gets fired. How their superior will know about this incomplete task? And they won't push this task to production themselves - after all, they're managers. So if someone will notice that the task wasn't done, the burden of pushing it to production will still fall on the developer. If their still with the company, of course. I think that the developer should be responsible for making sure the task is shipped to production. Yes, they might not always have all needed permissions - but that's not needed. They just need to keep an eye on the task. Yes, I think all levels of developers need to be responsible - not only senior or middle. Even juniors. Yes, they're only learning, and need more control. But this doesn't cancel the fact that they need to be responsible now and in the future. Was my merge request merged? Was it included in a release? Did someone enable a feature flag for this functionality (if applicable)? Can users access and use this functionality? Is it working as expected? This is the best possible scenario. QA can't track all tasks - they have a stream of such tasks. Developers by definition spend way more time with the task. And usually they don't have a hundred tasks a day. Still, it's a good practice to check if you have unmerged Pull Requests, from time to time. What would happen if: There was an important feature The developer would receive a bonus if it was released The merge request was reviewed and tested The task was moved to DONE But Merge Request was never merged Would they receive the bonus? I don't think so. From the business standpoint, the task wasn't done. This developer didn't ship it, or didn't make sure it shipped. I think it's fair to pay for what was done: developed AND reviewed AND tested AND shipped. No shipment, no bonus. No arms, no chocolate.
Many messengers have a feature where you can send notes to self or forward interesting messages for later reading. However, with time, such chats turn into a steaming pile of crap. This is a handy feature, yet it has downsides. Pros - Useful for jotting stuff down fast: messenger apps are often already open for day to day communication - Messages and posts can be forwarded there in a couple of clicks - Cross-platform Cons - It's a chat, not a notebook - Impossible to find anything - Forms a bad habit of storing everything in one place that's hard to give up - Hard to clean up - Posts and links get lost in the huge heap of stuff - Accidental leakage: sending to someone else instead of saving a message - Risk of losing data I've exported all data from Saved Messages locally and cleaned it up. From now on I intend to use a proper note-taking app (Google Keep) for notes, and I'll only use Saved Messages for saving useful posts and messages and we'll see how maintainable this is.= There's one flaw to it, which is almost impossible to fix: as soon as I create a Saved Messages chat again and start forwarding stuff to it, I'll be tempted to jot down notes there again. There's one more approach that exists: very regular cleanups, but in practice it's hard to follow such routine.
From time to time, we see news about bad events and sticky situations in foreign countries. We think such news make us happy, even I am susceptible to this. But in reality, I don't think they do. Seeing such news and perceiving them as good may lead to laziness. "Look! They have X happening. Good that we don't have that here, I can relax. That won't happen to me". Well, even if the most progressive civilizations struggle, what's left is to relax. "They're digging their own grave! They have X sins happening! We'll surely be ahead... So chill" But that's the wrong conclusion. We should learn from our own mistakes and from mistakes of others, not enjoy or make fun of them. Now with that context in mind, ask yourself: Who benefits from such news? It takes time and attention away from productive things we could do. And now a different side of the coin: Do people in these countries where such stuff happens even read these news? Or this an export product? How is this applicable to domestic markets? What does an American think about what's happening in their country? Do they get angry? What does this lead to? Who benefits, how? Again, I leave these questions for an avid reader. The most obvious benefit is clicks, attention and ad revenue. Any neutral events or news, or things we don't care about can be colored one way or another to attract our attention. Away from something that's really important and impacts us, not something ephemeral.
For me, 2022 was the year that shook things up. Events unfolded that made me realize that the world isn't as stable as I thought. On one hand, not much has changed for me personally, and I'm thankful for that. I didn't have to hide in bunkers or anything of that sort. But psychologically these times were tough. For the first time in my life, the world felt like it was about to crack. If the world isn't stable, what is? Out of panic, I decided to pack my things and go somewhere else, abroad. And in that I found peace: when you're on the move and you're seeing new places and new people constantly, the panic fades away. Not only that, but I did stop to care about spendings that much. Looking back, it was liberating. And I didn't regret any of the money spent. I regret a little bit wasting a lot of money traveling to a place I didn't enjoy, but still I don't regret it that much. After all, I've gained valuable information: which cultures and climates I do like and why. If the world isn't stable, does money even matter? If money doesn't matter, what does? If you don't know what's going to happen, you might as well do something. As the time passed, I've calmed down. And started falling back into old habits. Now I still travel, but not constantly - I mostly live in one city. I still travel, but plan with scrutiny and dread over money, even pennies. Suddenly money matters again for some unexplained reason. Well, I do understand why we care about money, but I don't understand how that transition happened and why. We tend to fall back to our default options if everything is stable. It seems change and stress may mobilize and revitalize us, what a paradox that is... And I don't travel as much again. And not having much fun again. I can't shake the feeling that there was something special about constantly moving. Traveling, meeting new people, exploring different cultures — it's an adventure that keeps life exciting. Even though I'm no longer moving around as much, I still believe that this way of living has immense value. It's clear that life is unpredictable, it's not the first shake-up, it won't be the last. Still, after some time adventure feels far more meaningful than staying put and stressing over savings. Travel, meet with friends and not care about wasting money. It was a happy period of my life and I don't regret it. Far from it - I want to repeat it. Without the shake-ups, I hope. If the situation got unstable again, I wouldn't care about pennies. We might as well stay in one place for 5 years, time goes by, we don't even notice it. Traveling, meeting friends and new people is better than not doing it at all. But I still think that I miss out on constant action and adventure, constantly meeting new people and seeing new places. It seems to me that nomad lifestyle is valuable and worth pursuing.
I moved from my parents house with a single backpack. It was my intention to do it this way. I hate traveling, moving for a lot of heavy bags. Who likes heavy bags? For a long time I wanted to keep the amount of stuff that I own to a minimum. To be mobile To keep rooms clean easier To have less cluttered space To spend less money But things still accumulate. Sometimes too much, as I posted earlier. We buy things we may not even use. On the other hand, it would be better to buy some things because they could bring us value, and not buying them depraves us of ability to achieve a goal or just enjoy a hobby. Having gone through this cycle twice, I still believe that we don't need a lot of things. And we should weigh whether things we own will be used and bring us value. And hobbies are important, too. Not that long ago I've learned to buy things. Previously I would hold back buying useful things. Who said we can't buy stuff? So after going full circle, I have a list of things to sell and give away, and I have things that brought me insane return on investment, and fun.
It's BALLSY title, I know. When I tell stories about my life and decisions I've made, some of them shock people. I don't think I'm the craziest person in the world, but still. I think these decisions and actions have an epic impact on my life. Not only that, but if most outcomes of these actions are positive, they'll have a snowball effect. I don't want to brag, but I need to provide some examples, and then I'll explain. - Learned programming instead of school subjects (could play way less games and learn even more or do something else, but still) - Dropped out of university - just started working instead; - Moved to another city with VERY limited budget and grew from there My mom supported me and I'm forever thankful for that, and I had a backup plan, but still! My young mind had no way back, this was it. All or nothing. I've lived in a 6 people dorm room in a hostel for a month and my budget was very strict. But it was totally worth it. - During pandemic started investing and trading, used to trade $TSLA for $1000 and $AMZN for $3800 (I was lucky to have 20% yearly profit, ~$2000) - Grew big enough balls to apply for work in Russian bigtech (failed twice, and then succeed) - In 2022 left to live in another country with 1 backpack - Grew even bigger balls to talk with Spotify recruiter (the interview didn't lead to anything, but still!) - Grew balls to become a team lead So, enough bragging. What I wanted to say is - I (and maybe you too) should do more ballsy stuff more often. To some people this list will seem silly - but that's the point. Do things that other seem impossible or crazy.
I think it's a useful trick, especially while doing research. What I mean is that I often start reading stuff back to front. Open article, scroll to the end, read conclusion, point 10, then 9 and so on. Say, there's a book I want to read, but I'm not sure if it's good or useful to me. I'll just start reading it from the back cover, or from the last chapter. Is there anything of value? If there isn't, I might check one more chapter and then drop it. Books usually have harder topics and conclusions at the end, if we don't find value there, maybe there's no point in reading the whole book. But of course each circumstance is different. I think this trick also helps to gauge how much time reading the whole article (or book) will take. I've scrolled down for two minutes straight, it's unlikely I'll be able to read all of it in one sitting. I'm on page 1000, means this book will take a while. On the other hand, it may help you finish what you've started. Since you already know the length, you might as well try to finish it right now. Since you already started reading from the wrong side, you might as well track back to the beginning to get the whole picture. You would probably drop an article if you'd start from the start, like normal people. Started reading, got distracted, need to go off. Welp, whatever. Out of sight, out of mind. On the other hand, if there's anything of value at the end and you don't know how and why the author reached this conclusion, you might read on. You also might read the conclusion of the article straight on, if that's the information you needed in the first place and you don't care for the rest. There are more benefits to reading back to front. Books and articles often start with easy stuff first, where most people would be able to follow along. Introductory ideas may be too simple to capture our attention, we may already know this stuff. And topics get harder and harder as you flip pages. Harder chapters need more focus and attention, and it tends to diminish towards the end of the book. But if you try to crack a book from the rear end, you might as well succeed. Your brain will perceive previous chapters as easier, hence more chance of finishing it. Earlier terms and concepts are often mentioned or repeated later on anyways. It doesn't mean you have to really read stuff from back cover to front, it just means you start reading that way. Somehow I've got so used to this it's my natural habit. Open a page, press End, boom, you're probably scrolled to the place in the article which you came for initially. I think this trick may also save us from confirmation bias. Author may try to convince us of something and we don't know their intentions. If we follow along, and the content starts with the stuff we agree with we might be persuaded to believe something that isn't true.
Would you ask AI to write a promotion letter for you? It could raise your chances, no? But does it really bring any value? Can you be replaced with an AI, then? Now, what if you would be fully satisfied with your job - that is - it was your calling: Would you just "cheat" with AI? What about the long term? Does AI really help you or is it just a crutch? Will you be able to function without it? Maybe people thought the same about search engines. But I think this time it's different. Search engines don't give you straight answers. They give you places where to look. And my final question: If you wanted to write a book, would you just ask AI to write it for you? Why not? Don't get me wrong, I DO use AI text models from time to time. And they are what they are - just text models. At this point, they don't have intelligence of their own. They can't synthesize ideas.
At first, I wanted to attack in-house frameworks specifically. But decided to broaden my list of enemies... Me and my colleague from another department were debugging an app build failure. The thing is, we have zero clue what went wrong. Why? Well, what does it mean to build an app? It depends! The process is completely different for an Android app to iOS and so on. It can even be different for two Android apps in the same company. Well, we (and devs in general) have some idea what SHOULD happen as a result of a build. Frontend apps on the web consist of a html page, scripts and styles. And in the build process, source files get uglified and minified, TypeScript types get stripped, and so on. But what happened in our case? We have no clue. There are some additional steps. We don't know and don't care about these steps, in fact - they're neatly hidden inside some framework scripts. Yes, there's a stack trace, there are some docs about this framework, we can even try to ask maintainers. But in reality - no one knows what happened. Does this meta framework provide value? Well, yes, it kinda simplifies some things. But there's no single person who knows how it works. I don't want to say that ALL meta frameworks are bad. It depends. Let's take NextJS as an example: It's a framework that does a lot of stuff on top of React AND it is some kind of a backend framework (a shitty one), and some extra features on top of all that. I understand React, I understand backend and servers, I understand, let's say, Express, a backend Node framework. I don't understand NextJS. I have no clue what creators decided to do. There's a lot of custom extra stuff. Believe me, I've tried to debug such problems myself - but there are so many layers: You take a look at the stack trace and go down a rabbit hole of NPM packages. 10 levels deep and you forget what year it is. Here's my gripes with meta frameworks: * The docs are often lacking * It can and probably will break with an update of underlying libs * No one knows how it works - people treat it like a black box * ...Even developers/maintainers don't know how it works * No one will be able to help you * Some issues aren't going to be fixed ever * You may not even understand why certain issues happen * You wouldn't be able to rewrite the problematic part yourself * ...because such frameworks are usually big and monolithic You're probably not Facebook or Vercel or Evan Vue. Better think twice before making your own framework, doesn't matter if it will be based on something else or not. Libraries like React, SwiftUI or Jetpack Compose are a necessary abstraction. Frameworks like Angular, Symfony, Django and so on, are fine too. They all provide one layer of abstraction. There's one more good example: Svelte and SvelteKit. They fit like a hand and a glove: they have the same author and I believe they're made to work together well, and so it does. Nuxt and Vue, NextJS and React on the other hand... No. So in general I'd stay away from frameworks built on top of other libraries or frameworks. If it's possible to remove one layer of abstraction and not lose too much - I think it is the way to go.
Maybe the tip to stop reading the news isn't that bad. But news still reach us: friends and family share posts and articles to us. But more often than not we get negative value after reading this stuff. We waste time and react emotionally even if only for a split second. Regular person is unlikely to prove or disprove a particular post. Especially data leaks. Say, news outlets start posting that a big company (or government) was hacked and there was a data leak. And the post contains a screenshot with some names, numbers etc. It may even contain some elements of an admin web interface which looks like some government stuff. But how do I know if it's not fake? There's pretty much no way of knowing that. The entity from which the data was allegedly extracted will deny leak allegations, even if it happened. The company has its reputation, as well as the government. It's not a silver bullet, but for most entities it is the best action to take. And to prove that the leak happened you need the whole dataset. Or at least more than 50% of it. Still, how do you know if it's not an old leak represented as new? How can you confirm the source of the leak? Will you personally analyze 50,000 rows? How? You don't know most of these people - how are you supposed to check if it's true? And the most important - does this leak hold any value? Can scammers actually steal your funds using this leaked data, or do something malicious to you? How much news can you remember that turned out to be true? And which turned out to be false? I came up with a news funnel concept for myself: Is this important for me? Did it happen already (allegedly...) or is it a speculation, prediction? Did it really happen? Can it really happen? How likely? How does this event affect me and my loved ones? Can I do something (or already did) to lower the risk? I have more food for thought: Do we need news moderation, censorship? (government or platform based) My two cents for this is: I would like to see everything that is sent to me (even though all of it may turn out to be a fake) and decide for myself. Although I would like to receive less such posts, but that's another story. After seeing lots and lots of bullshit (and for some time even believing it, I admit), it seems that to some extent I've learned to filter the news for myself. No system is ideal - so news moderation could work 99% of the time, but 1% would leave you vulnerable to disinformation. After all, if it reached me after censorship systems - it must be true! Not necessarily... I'm not sure though that my approach is the best for everyone, maybe some people react to everything and don't learn at all. Try and see how much news turned out to be a dud or just unimportant? I've checked message history in a couple of group chats: I didn't find anything valuable in terms of news, even though at the time of posting I could've reacted to some of these "news".
The more sleep problems I encounter, the more I realize that the most important thing is a consistent alarm that works. Each and every day same time over and over again. The one you'll only be able to disable if you're fully awake; and the one you won't be able to fall asleep to. I'm not saying this is the best way to sleep. This is the best way not to fuck up the whole rhythm too much. It's a safe guard. One more realization that I have is a formula which calculates the time till which we'll stay awake no matter what. It's waking time plus 16 hours give or take. Why 16? Well, the day is 24 hours minus 8 for healthy sleep is 16. Waking Time + 16 Hours = Awake Till X O'Clock So for example, if you woke up at noon, good luck trying to fall asleep before 04:00 in the morning. And what happens next? So in the best case, you'll fall asleep at 4, sleep for 8 hours. Wake up at noon again. Well, this is a best case scenario. You'll most likely regress, fall asleep at 04:30 or 05:00, wake up at 12:30 or 13:00. And so on. It will snowball.
Recently I wanted to buy a good vintage camera. I've bought Olympus OM-2 in stellar condition and it wasn't cheap. And now I feel like Gollum saying "my precious" and never take pictures with it. Because it's old, may potentially break, Olympus doesn't produce film cameras and this model specifically anymore... So I've bought a cheap and used Zenit TTL for a fraction of Olympus price, almost for free. I can buy ten of those. I like this camera, and if I break it, I'll be sad nevertheless. But I don't baby over it. I will take it to hell and back. Functionally they're not that different. So I'm probably going to sell the Olympus. I'll just keep the simple stuff. Zenit TTL feels sturdy like an AK-47, so I'm chill. Don't get me wrong, Olympus feels the same way... But it kinda feels more like a museum piece. It's more like an M1 Garand, you probably wouldn't beat it and take it through mud. Same concept is applicable to digital cameras, but I'm not quite there yet. An ideal camera doesn't exist. Light, small, IBIS, looks cool, full frame, lots of megapixels but stellar big pixels. Bright, sharp, light, small, stabilized zoom Lens with distinct vintage look. It's pretty much impossible. You'll have to pick and choose. Hoarding gear doesn't benefit anyone, especially my wallet. Gear accumulates dust. I have too many cameras and lenses, but realistically how much do I use and how often? I'm planning to reduce my collection to: Panasonic Lumix GM1 with a pancake lens Fujifilm X-T30 with a 16-80 zoom lens Zenit TTL with Helios 44-2 50/2 Holga 120CN ...and a Nikon 50 1.8 vintage lens which I don't know where and how to stick it to and which I can't and won't sell because it's perfect... (I would happily stick it on the Zenit though, but I'm afraid that's almost impossible)
My hypothesis is that we can barely hold 1 thing in focus. We have many ambitions, but some are more important than others. I'd say that most people have THE GOAL, which is more important than everything else, whether they realize it or not. Let's see an example, a personal one. Since 2024 my top goal is to lose weight. I NEED to accomplish it. For perception of my own self, objective beauty standards and health. Without excessive weight, I'd sleep better, run longer, get less tired. Be able to climb mountains not hills without gasping for air. Nothing beats this goal, it is beyond everything else for me right now. It's better to live a higher quality life than lower. It's better to live longer and stronger. However, we are animals and our instincts rule us, for the most part. See food, eat food; or be hungry and die. So it's hard to keep on track and adding other goals would only distract me. We can, however, reach THE goal but also do fun things. Let me explain. Losing weight means eating less, and spending more calories. We can workout to spend more calories. Working out gives us muscle. Muscles are good for longevity, self image, etc. Muscle eats more calories. Even if we don't lose weight, at least we get leaner and stronger, which is good even on its own. Power that we reach stays with us for quite some time even after we stop exercising completely. Duh, that's obvious! Read on... Try new exercises. Pistol squat, pull ups, push ups. Learn new skills. Take a dancing class, learn to ride bicycle. It is a challenge on its own, and it gets interesting. And when you accomplish it, you'll likely get more muscular and/or lean. And then you'll want to set a new goal. From 0 to 1 to 2 push ups, and so on. We can travel. Preferably travel to places where you'll have to and want to walk a lot. Walking a lot helps to lose weight, keeps us active. Hopefully the places we visit are so interesting, we forget to eat. Travel to the mountains, it will be hell of a workout and you'll enjoy it! We can take photography as a hobby. For me, there isn't much to take photos of at home. I need to get out to shoot. You can even get into analog photography so you'll have to ALSO go to the lab to give them negatives to develop and then take them back. Each such "side" skill can branch off new skills. Taking film photography made me master manual focus and black and white film development at home. It doesn't contribute to the top goal much, but it's still cool. But it still kinda does though: I've had to run errands for home photo lab supplies: chemistry, reels, a development tank. Learn cooking. I think it most likely will lead to cheaper, tastier and healthier meals. And since I'm a lazy ass, I started to eat less since cooking takes my time and effort instead of a 1 click of a button instant food delivery from an app in smartphone right to my doorstep. You'll have to keep reminding yourself of your top goal, though. In my case, the arrow must move down. If it's not moving down, it's moving up. If it's moving up, I'll be a miserable, depressed, heavy breathing, pacing and suffering piece of fat.
At the end of 2023, I've realized that I didn't travel much for almost a year. Time passes by very fast. So I did two trips and it was amazing. From this moment on, I decided that I'm going to travel regularly. I enjoy travel. In 2024 I continued this trend, I've made 5 trips just during the spring, but then somehow got busy or something. I can't even explain or remember but time just went by. And here I was, the year almost went by and I'm exhausted. See, it's a bad habit of mine to hold and take vacations when I'm already burned out. So I've planned a trip home and a also planned New Year's eve holidays. And then I realized, if I don't plan ahead, I'm likely to stick to old habits. Everything goes to homeostasis if we don't take action. So I've planned half a year ahead. Even if not all of the trips will turn out, some of them will. And the best part, since almost nobody plans ahead and specifically that far, I'll reap the benefit of cheap prices on hotels and plane tickets. I think that planning trips beforehand also increases the chances to meet with friends and family. Of course, our desires can change with time, but more often than not we doubt too much. "Do I want to go there or not? Maybe I'm going to be busy..." When you have money on the line, you're more likely to follow through with your plans.
Until recently it was unthinkable for me to walk in cold weather in thin pants. C'mon, you gotta wear thick jeans or special winter pants, which are only useful in REALLY cold weather. They're usually bulky and you can't wear only a part of them if it's not THAT cold. In other words: you can't play strip poker for too long. I'm just kidding. ## One pants to rule them all The solution is layers. I've heard about it before, but started applying it only after I've bought pants which quickly became my favourite. At first, I didn't understand it: they're too thin! I can only wear them in the summer! The shop fooled me! But I liked them so much that with time I couldn't even think about wearing something else. So I've just bought underpants for colder seasons. Now I can confidently say I can wear them year round, each and every season. I still can't believe this, really. I'm walking in thin pants in -30° C! They're light: I can wear them even in the hottest summer (40° C). Not to mention spring and autumn. In winter, I can add 1 or even 2 layers of underpants without a problem. Here's my setup. - The outer pants are like "pantalons": they have lots of free space or air. I kinda like it in the summer for this reason, they breathe well and don't stick to your skin. - The bottom layer should be tight as hell but comfortable. It's your second skin. - The base layer: add it in between if it's as cold as in the Ice Age. In my experience, I add it if I'm going to be out and about in the cold for a long time and it's -20 to -30° C outside. If it's colder than that, upgrade some layer to be even warmer: e.g. opt for super warm wool pants or wear a thicker outer shell. Consider a wind and waterproof outer shell. Somehow all of this layering is still more comfortable than all in one bulky pants... Layering also allows me to pack lighter: instead of taking 2 or 3 warm and really bulky pants, I can pack as many light outer shells as I want and as many base layers that I need. The reason is physics. I didn't skip class, and all my physics teachers told me that layers work better than just worm clothes, but I've only understood and applied that years later. 1. Layers of clothing trap air between them, and air is a poor conductor of heat, meaning it helps keep the warmth. 2. When several layers of clothing are worn, each layer traps a new layer of air. This setup increases the amount of trapped air, which enhances the insulation effect 3. Multiple layers slow down the process of heat loss because they increase the overall amount of insulating material (air and fabric) around the body, which works as barriers to heat loss. The same concept is applicable to shirts. For the chilliest winter seasons, take a good fat winter jacket: water and wind proof, and then there are many options: any sweater, long sleeve or hoodie and a one or two base layers. If it's a short trip, consider wearing a base layer plus light outer layer and a winter jacket on yourself and packing one more base and outer layer. You get more options: you can pick and choose layers and you win in size and weight of your baggage, which means you don't have to carry big and heavy bags, or you can take more fancy outer clothes for the sake of variety.
Precaution: I don't have a goal to depress or impress anyone, it's just my thoughts on the topic. I don't know if it can, but consider this a warning. I'm also not a doctor and not a shrink. My opinion is that self esteem should be adequate. What?! What a stupid truism! Let me explain. You shouldn't have high self esteem: we most likely are not the best versions of ourselves. If we think we're the best, what to strive for? And it is a fact there's almost always something to improve, so high self esteem is inadequate and somehow needs to be re-evaluated. Nota Bene: high as in "I'm good as-is" or "I'm definitely better than everyone else". Maybe I'm wrong and we should tell ourselves "wegoodbruh", but I really don't think that it's a good idea... You could try it! The author assumes no responsibility or liability for your actions though. Self Esteem can be high, but I think it shouldn't be. I understand though that for a person with high self esteem can be hard to know if they have it high and re-evaluating it may even be an impossible task. Low Self Esteem can be two distinct things: it either is adequate or not. Maybe you really do great stuff and underrate yourself OR you are a lazy ass (this is just an example)... And then your low self esteem assessment is accurate. The problem is that it's hard to know if this is the case for oneself. Unfortunately I personally don't have solutions for you if you have an undervalued self esteem. Probably it could be helpful to list your actions and achievements, and see for yourself or ask for an opinion from other people. Let's try to imagine for a second a person which has a low self esteem because they didn't accomplish anything in quite some time. Well, then they're right. And this signal, low self esteem, is telling them to do something. So, low self esteem isn't bad per se. It's a signal, but it's not always a clear one. Either you have to re-evaluate your achievements or do more stuff. If Self Esteem is low, something should be done about it. Note though that I'm not a judge: I didn't say that people should do stuff. We've only observed that a person has low self esteem because of lack of accomplishment. If a person lays on a sofa all day every day happy and doesn't see a problem... Well, neither do I, that's their business. See, it seems that my self esteem hinges on my actions: e.g. did I try to do something new. Yours could be different, but I suppose the concept still holds if true. E.g. "I feel like shit because I'm rude", so being polite or helpful or less rude could improve self esteem. In my self evaluation, self esteem is a binary system: "Needs work" and "Working". Maybe in future I'll become rich or popular as fuck, and I'll have to deal with high self esteem, we'll see. I suppose high self esteem is a rare psychological condition. I don't think that even rich, famous or successful people often think high of themselves, quite often the opposite is true, and then they need to re-evaluate their situation. I'm not in any way saying it's simple. Even the great and powerful people struggle to beat the blues, it's a hard task. Self Esteem: Evaluate as accurately as you can, with outside opinion if needed. Low: beat existing challenges, start very small Mid: just be; or do what you've planned or Mid: find new challenges and beat them High: find EVEN HARDER challenges and beat them, rinse and repeat This is an excerpt of my own thought process. At some point I got to a low-ish point, but was lucky that my brain pointed me in the direction of doing. My previous self could still wallow without any action. In my eyes the only way is to try to do stuff that we want to do and achieve, and then some. As cliche as it sounds, most barriers are in our brains. I hope all of this was encouraging and not discouraging.
Just a fun mind experiment I've made. I used to smoke 1 to 2 packs a day. A pack costs 150-250 Russian Roubles. Let's say 300 roubles a day. So every year smoking would cost me: 300 * 365 = 110,000 roubles per year. This sum of money buys me: 10 x Fomapan 400 10 x Ilford Delta 3200 10 x Kodak UltraMax 400 10 x Portra 800 AND 40 x rolls developed and scanned by the best lab in a highest quality possible This is actually mind blowing to me, since film is expensive. This is 480 shots of 120 6x6 film (a small amount of pictures) or a whopping 1440 pictures of 35mm film. Heck, you can throw away some rolls and fit a classic mint condition camera WITH lens in this budget. Now, this is just my calculation, you're welcome to plug in your favorite film stocks. If film isn't your thing and you're fighting an addiction, maybe try to apply this experiment to your favourite hobby.
Recently I've experienced one of the worst sleepless nights, due to disrupted bedtime regime. I was laying in bed for 7 hours and only slept for an hour or so, it was torture. The main problem is that I tend to code or play games for too long or watch something long into the night.
Night owls get insomnias, it turns out.
The first part of the solution that came to my mind is to automatically shut down the PC at midnight. Here's the Windows command: schtasks /create /tn ShutdownNightly /tr "shutdown -s -t 360" /st 00:00
It works perfectly, I've tested it at least two times. Now, in the bedroom a new enemy awaits - a smartphone.
A friend of mine suggested that it might be useful to set up parental controls on the router so that any device on the network doesn't get internet after midnight, so I did that... From my phone. In bed. Oops...
I've set it up so that network goes back online just before work, so that I have plenty of morning time to make a good breakfast, exercise, etc without much distractions. I might tune it down, but we'll see.
In my case, the router solution works (for now), because I use a spare phone in the bed, which doesn't have a SIM card in it. Otherwise, I don't have hopes. No WiFi? Pff. "Hey Siri, turn on 5G... OK Google, open YouTube..." You get the gist. Nothing stops me from accessing the router settings from my SIMless phone though but we'll see.
There's still room to improve. It would be better to lay in bed without a phone, and better than that, with no devices at all. I'm not on that level yet: I can only sleep if I'm listening to music. I know that's not great, but oh well... One step at a time.
I have a bonus tip for you:
Set up an alarm which will ring in the other room, so you'll have to stand up and walk in order to disable it. It really works. Well, to a certain extent... Nothing stops you from going back to bed after standing up, walking and disabling the alarm, but hey! It really is better than just hitting snooze without even opening your eyes. I did that countless times in my life.
Good night and sleep tight!
At some point, I was flying a low cost airlines with just 1 ordinary backpack. But I didn't pay for baggage, and the bag indeed exceeded the size requirements: it was well packed. I had to hastily pay extra for the baggage, leave it behind, and then wait for it upon landing. I hate waiting for baggage claim on arrival, and there's also a possibility that it will be lost ...and at that point it costs the same as a normal flight. On the next trip, there was only one flight that suited me and it was a low cost one (and with the added baggage... well, it stops being low cost). So I've read the tariff rules, and it stated the following: I can take a 40x30x20 bag, and a laptop bag or a camera bag. So I've packed my trusty North Face Borealis (just for reference), But! I've packed my camera bag inside and in it I also loaded anything that shouldn't go to checked baggage: A charger, USB cable, power adapter, toiletries, a pair of socks, a T-shirt, a camera... Basically anything I could fit in there. To be honest with you, I only really use this bag for this purpose only. I apply this trick even if I don't take the camera with me, which is rare, but in this case I can stuff this bag even more. First of all, the bag serves an organizational purpose. Second, I can still take the bag out and send my backpack anywhere and don't lose anything critical. Third, I can take it out before check-in desk, wear it on my shoulder. And that isn't against the rules: I have a backpack that now fits into 40x30x20 box and a camera bag, which is allowed. There's one downside: it's inconvenient. Taking it out before checking, carrying it, and putting it in after. But it's fine. It's only for a very short time, and the whole process doesn't take too long, so it's not a big deal. In general, I dislike traveling with a suitcase, and limit myself to just one regular sized backpack, and I'm a greedy bastard. I'll take 5 minutes of humiliation for the benefits.
I've started smoking so stupidly and this went on for too long, for almost eight years. Up until recently I've been smoking one and a half pack a day of Malboro Reds every day. It got to a point that I could chain smoke 5 cigarettes all by myself, and I thought enough is enough. Not only this is very unhealthy, but it is also stupid from financial point of view. Calculate the total money spent plus the surplus lost by not earning interest. Here's an example: 8 years * 365 days = 2920 packs, let's round that to 3000 packs a year. Where I'm at a pack of cigs cost 2-3 bucks, but it can cost as much as 10 or even 20 US dollars. Well, even if it did cost $1 per pack, it's 3 grand, before interest. To calculate total amount with interest, let's assume that we're depositing $30 each month (3000 / 8 / 12). And I'll assume an interest rate of 10%, an average ETF return rate. Plug in the numbers here yourself. Total amount contributed $2,880.00 Total interest $1,236.92 Your estimated savings $4,116.92 It's almost a half of a deposited sum! Not only you'd take three grand out of thin air, you would also accumulate an additional thousand bucks. And that's assuming the pack costs 1 dollar. Try adjusting it, and you'll be shocked. The famous Alan Carr method didn't work, although it had some good points. Will power didn't work too. Even the money aspect couldn't motivate me for some reason. This reason is that nicotine is a drug, and smoking is a drug addiction. I was lucky that one day a friend of mine said that he started using Tabex and it works wonders, so I've bought it too. I haven't heard anything about it previously, I've only heard about and tried patches, gums, lozenges, pouches, vapes, which all contain nicotine, which is the thing you're trying to give up. In my opinion, don't even think giving up nicotine by taking it in other form. It can aid in quitting, but in my opinion it isn't THE way to quit. Tabex (and other similar drugs) to put it simly, work by replacing nicotine in your brain with something similar but different. So your brain receptors are satisfied, but you don't feel anything. First of all, do your own research, read instructions, beware of the side effects and be careful if you have mental disorders. But this shit works. So here's the description of how it went: The first day I smoked the usual amount of cigs, but no chain smoking, got almost no joy out of it. The second day I've got 5 cigs, so I've told myself I'll just end the pack and that's it. And that WAS it. Cigarettes became empty burning paper rolls that smell like shit, nothing more. I've also used 2 or 3 nicotine gums, and a weak nicotine vape. On day 3 disposable vape pen died in the morning, so I did 2 gums at noon and threw it away too. Day 4, only Tabex, no side effects, and it went like that till the end of the treatment. Now, let's talk about the side effects that I did have. This is very subjective. Also, it's hard to tell whether it is side effects or effects of not smoking, but anyways. It makes you calm, relaxed, in general. Even the muscles. Most of the time it's harder to concentrate, other times all you can do is concentrate on something. The first night I've got crazy dreams. On the third day, in the evening I've got moody... I don't often get the blues, it happens maybe once a year. It lasted for an hour or so, but it was a bit concerning, but it passed. On Day 4, at noon it felt like I took speed for half an hour ...and then it felt like I'm stoned since noon 'till evening... It's best to be on vacation on this stuff, at least the first five days. It seems that physical cravings pretty much disappear, psychological do appear sometimes. But they're easy to fight while on this.
I was reading an article and then needed to be somewhere and don't be late, but it was captivating. So I've quickly found a way to make a page be read to me aloud. Here's the app for Android: Audify. There are ways to do it without 3rd party apps, such as with the help of accessibility features (I've tried it on iOS, the speech synthesis is pretty good), it can even read books and flip pages. But this app installed in just a couple of clicks and in a few seconds I was able to just go about my day and have an article being read to me. Actually, it happened twice on the same day. The other time I was really on the go, in transit, walking in the city centre and a friend of mine sent me an interesting article. I've just opened the app and... Boom! Here it is, just spoken out loud for me automatically.
Have you ever experienced this? You mind your own business, open an app to do something you have in mind, only to be greeted with a popup. Not only this is a distraction, it also isn't a good solution overall. I've accidentally closed them more times than I've seen what they should have presented. And now that I've closed it, I have no clue whatsoever what was that about. I think I've gotten used to this, so much so that my first knee jerk reaction is to do a quick back gesture, before any nonsense appears on my screen. A bit better solution is to make 'em closeable only through specific buttons: a call to action and a designated close button. This still sucks big time, because I could've forgotten what I wanted to do with your darned app. It's still a distraction, and now even a more annoying one. Please don't do this. Don't ever open shit without user promoted action. Ever. What to do instead? Buy a nice acre of screen land, and place your shit there, on the freaking page. There you go. On that note, stop fucking asking me three consecutive permissions upon app open, which you aren't going to use right this moment. Even if these permissions are necessary for the intended action, improvise and stop with the fucking popup prompts out of nowhere.
Recently I've started to grind and brew coffee. Until that I've only drank instant coffee, I didn't knew any better. I didn't ever like it 100% percent. I also ordered coffee in cafés and didn't understand why it is so hard to find good coffee. I've also thought that I couldn't drink coffee sugar free, because it is disgusting! Sometimes even milk or cream can't save it. Worst of all is, everybody talks about coffee makers, machines, some magical processes, like quantum physics and requires deadly precision, otherwise the coffee will turn out like piss. This is total bullshit. I've just dared to try - bought beans and chemex (ceramic funnel will do just fine too). I grind beans in a blender like a barbarian. And what do you think? Since that moment I drink the best coffee there is, or that I've ever tried.
Forbes? Haha, no. It would be cool, but I have a less global goal, yet very important for myself. Forbes will wait. I've stumbled upon this idea randomly. So, what's the deal? Lose 30 KG by 30. To cheat a little bit and make the numbers pretty, I'll count down from 100 KG. By the way, yes, I've made some more progress since the last time I've posted about it. And now I have 946 days and 25 kilos to beat this challenge. Time Left: 946 Days Weight To Get Rid Of: 25 KG Final Date: April 2, 2027 Final Weight: 70 KG My previous weight goal, which was 100 KG down from 114 KG, was set without a specific date or deadline, yet I've reached it. By declaring this goal publicly, I hope it will keep myself accountable. 1, 2, 3... Let's go!
Frustrated with amounts of money leaving my bank account each month, I’ve set myself to get rid of each and every subscription. You might roll your eyes, because it is obvious to you, but bare with me here. Why ditch subscriptions? In my opinion, it’s the easiest thing to give up to reduce spending. But wait! $10 bucks doesn’t look like a huge load of money! True, you’re unlikely to notice it looking at the monthly expenses. But they do add up over time. Netflix currently costs $15.49, let’s round that up to $20. So, our monthly expense is $20, if we take that money and deposit it somewhere for 10 years for a high yield (13%), in 10 years we’ll get the same amount of money we deposited on top of it, about $5,000 total. Plug the numbers in and see for yourself: https://www.nerdwallet.com/calculator/compound-interest-calculator Luckily, subscriptions aren’t addictions. Sort of.
There is a powerful and quite simple technique to make a plan for complex tasks. I’ve used it many times at work. Let’s say you’re given a rough business description of a feature. * How are we going to deliver it? Release a new version of an app. * How can we make sure that release is a success? Check logs, metrics and other stuff. * How do we ship it? Hide feature with toggle, make a deploy on production, test it, enable the toggle …and so on, until we reach the very first steps. These steps may be to develop necessary components, and then to integrate them, and so on. Here’s a simple example of such a plan: “The Chat Bot Widget Feature”:
Given this plan, it is clear that we can do a couple of things in parallel. E.g. developer Steve will check the designs and make tasks to develop UI, and Jane will negotiate with the backend team. After making such a plan, you’re ready to create an Epic, split it into tasks, and even link those tasks with each other, and finally, to start working on it.
Since I’ve moved from my parents house, I’ve need a chair. And I bought a cheap, but adequate chair. It has decent back and all, but the wheels are plastic and they wore out in a year or so. Also rolling on these wheels is a no-no on a wood floor, so I’ve got a cheap rug. What I should’ve done from the start without breaking the buck instead is to get $20 roller blade style wheels. They’re silicone, so they don’t hurt wooden floors, and they roll like crazy. They also have a brake. It feels great. I can also ditch the carpet now, because I don’t really like it or need it. It is easier to just clean the floor. And carpets do accumulate dust. One more thing is that a quick (but thorough) search in a big online shop, I couldn’t find a chair with good wheels (even for three hundred bucks). Maybe such chairs exist and maybe for a cheaper price, but good luck finding them I guess. I’ve also checked Herman Miller and DXRacer chairs (from cheapest to $1000+), I haven’t seen good wheels. I hope to be mistaken, but it seems that all default chair wheels SUCK.
…for both web and mobile... Because not all errors happen on back-end side Because your app may be not the only client of an API Because your users may experience problems, but on API scale it can just be a small bump Because users have a lot of different devices, OSes, versions, brands, browsers, extensions etc Because front side bugs exist Because you can't always find every bug Because you may not test an app that thoroughly, like the most active user would Because you may miss: load testing, latency checks, slow internet testing, low-end device testing
Do you remember the first time you drank an energy drink? I don't. I've probably "just tried it" sometime somewhere. The first I can remember is when I was about to deliver a big project presentation in university. I was nervous, sleep deprived, made a presentation file just before the deadline. I know for a fact, that it wasn't the first one. I've liked the taste of it. I've liked the buzz it gives. As a young student, I've consumed those Red Bulls and others from time to time, and I've continued to do so when I've become an employee. Fast forward 5 years or so to 2023: I'm overweight, working from home, drinking 5 cans a day. And I didn't limit myself to energy drinks. I've drank from 0.5 to 1 liters of cola (or something similar) each day, plus black tea. I thought I couldn't function without these liquid batteries. The critical moment was when I've realized that: * I'm far too fat (110 KG) * Have heart palpations, trying to sleep at night (like I'm running a marathon) * And then at some point I've even started to get heart palpations in broad daylight I've rushed to a therapist and they said this: * You have a healthy blood pressure (for now) * You have an okay-ish resting heart rate (for now) * But your body gave you a clear warning * You need to change your lifestyle: - Loose weight - Eat healthy - Exercise - Reduce sugar and caffeine intake ...or else! Of course I didn't want to Fuck Around And Find Out what would've happened. I think I've needed to hear this from someone else. After that visit I've gradually reduced the number of energy drinks to 0... It was that easy to be honest. Because I was scared shitless. Now, I didn't quit caffeine for good, far from it, that's true. A month ago, I was drinking tea and black coffee (with sugar). Now, I could only consume black coffee with added sugar, because without it, it was too bitter. I've tried replacing sugar with other sweeteners, but it was not the same and I didn't really like the taste. I don't like sweeteners overall. Sugar-free drinks (like cola, energy drinks) taste like shit in my opinion, because of artifical sweeteners. Or maybe they just taste like shit without sugar? I guess we'll never know. But I would've really prefered that sugar-free drinks would be sweetener free too. Since the sweetener experiment failed, I've just clenched my teeth and drank black coffee without sugar. After one bitter cup, it became the norm for me, I like the raw coffee now. Side note: I drink black tea without sugar (or anything) for like 10 years or more. That habit of mine is an old one. Since I've visited the doctor, I have: * Quit energy drinks * Quit cola (and other sugary drinks) * Quit added sugar I've also stopped eating croissants and such, and also sweet chocolate. Only bitter chocolate for me. Bitte. That probably contributed (greatly) to weight loss. And what now? Thank god, I don't have these frightening, terrifying heart palpations in the day. But I also don't have them at night. I don't have crazy sugar cravings and crazy hunger. To be continued...
Recently I've got the urge to read more. Not because I “need to”. I've used to read books from time to time. So I started to think, why am I not reading and how can I get back to it. Most of the books I've read, I've read on a smartphone. But lately it is not a good option for me. There are many distractions on a smartphone. And even though phones are big nowadays, they're still too small to read from comfortably, at least for me. I try to offload tasks from smartphone to desktop or laptop, because I can't hold perfect posture if I'm starting at a small screen, this is seriously bad for my neck and back. Should I read instead of doom scrolling? Suuure… But still, I need to get into it first. I don't have specific books in mind, but I do have topics that I'm interested in. So, the main question for me is this: What's the best medium to read books? In terms of: - Commitment - Price - Assortment - Comfort Everything is yet to be determined, but I bet that physical paper books are the best in terms of commitment. You bring them home. You lay them on a table. Book stares at you, begging to be read from. Perfect. The next best thing is probably e-reader, since there isn't much you can do besides, well, reading. Then goes the tablet, and everything else (smartphone, PC, laptop) sucks at this. I feel like I can do and read anything on PC or a laptop, so I don't even do it. If you bought a pdf, well, it's somewhere on the disk. Whatever. I'll just watch YouTube all day. I didn't really use an iPad for much else besides reading because other devices do it better (phone is always in a pocket, PC has a larger screen), so it works better. Maybe. Nothing beats digital books in terms of price if yarr a bloody pirate. But free stuff doesn't commit you to do anything. And paid digital stuff is so expensive, it makes me red from greed. I mean, a Kindle digital book cost like a thirty bucks. Or get a subscription. Even brand new, tangible, printed, made of paper book costs less on the same old Amazon. You pay for the convenience, I guess? These numbers just don't work in my head, so I'm not paying 30 bucks for a pdf. Brand new books are too expensive too, in my mediocre opinion (and overrated). I don't give two shits even if it has sketches inside of it, or is wrinkled. I'll take this discount, please. *Cha-ching!* Digital books win in terms of availability and assortment, you can get almost any book (or anything) in a click of a button. Even free (most of the time, it is even easier, faster). There aren't that many English books where I live. And I don't want to read translations. I really don't. There is also a question of what is available locally and what can be ordered and delivered. I've had a few books in mind that I'd like to have at hand, but they're either not available at all, or not available in English. If price is taken into consideration, that leaves me with second hand books, which limits assortment even more. Okay, maybe E-reader, then? Well, it's kind of a subpar tablet, eh? Also, not every book, especially PDF is going to work (work well) on an e-reader. Alrighty, a tablet. I've read some books on it, from cover to cover. Which one to choose? What's the best size, price and color!? Okay, I don't care about the color, but seriously, which one? I think I've reached decision fatigue on this one. There is iPad and Android. Oh, wait, there are like 10 iPad models and 5 if not more Android tablet vendors, and even more models... To be continued…
If you see that number, what do you think? Is that a big weight? If your weight is below that, you probably see this as a bad weight. If you're 110 KG, you wish you would be 100 KG. There are more dimensions to this, of course. Height, muscles, and so on. If you're tall and muscular, I guess a hundred is your normal weight. An ideal weight for my height, on the other hand is 65 KG. I used to be like that; somewhat fit. I started training around 14 years old. Before that, my weight was okay I guess, but I had no muscles and lots of fat. It was really hard to do pull ups in the beginning, luckily I had great friends, who not only taught me, but encouraged to do sports. In the beginning, I couldn't pull myself even once. I just hang like a sausage. At first, I've just tried to swing back and forth, and tried to do cheat pull ups. It works, by the way. After some time I could ditch cheating completely and do 1, then 2, then 3 pull ups and so on. In my peak physique, I've still had some fat, but in general was happy with myself. I could do like 10 dips and 15 pull ups. I don't remember how long it took me to reach this form, but I suppose it was in the range of 1 to 3 years. And what's cool about that, the form stays for quite some time. Even when I've stopped exercising regularly, I could still manage 10 pull ups, even after months of no training. Unfortunately, at some point I've completely forgot to workout. As I grew up, I've got to work and do other adult stuff, like cooking (which I didn't know how to, so I didn't). The weights kept showing larger and larger numbers. For some reason, I kept ingoring it, until I couldn't anymore. I've said enough is enough when it reached 110 KG. I was terrified when I realized that I can't do a single pull up, even swinging. I couldn't even do a push up! I knew based on past experience that it is possible to beat this. But I would say that this time it was even harder. I was even more obese than before, and all of my muscles were gone. I've started training at 01.01.2024. Today is 04.08.2024. I've lost 13 KGs. It felt like am not doing any progress, days and weeks and months. And losing more weight gets harder and harder, it seems. But I'm not giving up. I couldn't do 1 pull up. Now I can do 5x4, and even squeeze a little bit more. I couldn't do a single dip last week. The day before yesterday I did just 2. Now I can do 3, and even do a little bit more after that! I've also changed my diet. I used to order restaurant food deliveries (and fast food). At some point, I've tried everything and was bored and sick of it. I've started eating healthy foods, and cooking meals myself. I ditched sugar in my coffee. I thought it was impossible. It really is just a habit. You get used to it. I used to eat oatmeal with sugar or something sweat. Just add some berries or fruits. Yes, I do realize they have sugar, but they're healthier than cookies. As a bonus point, you'll eat less. You'll eat just as much as you need. After some time, I've just stopped even looking at croissants and other sweet stuff. I don't order it anymore. Note, this didn't happen one day and all at once. Every change was very gradual and one by one. At some point, I might be able to eat anything and everything (given enough activity), but I'm not there yet in my honest opinion. Here's my tips: - Can't do push ups? Push off a wall, or a table or anything - Maybe, invest in a floor push up handles, it helped me a ton - Can't do dips? Try anyway. Ascend slowly. If it hurts, stop, rest a day or two and try again - Train for muscle growth first and foremost. Muscles look better than fat, and they also passively burn calories. Sort of? - Lift weights. You don't have to lift a ton. But do it anyway. It's also nice to feel no back pain, to have a better posture. There's also one more thing that I've missed when I was a teenager: I didn't train all of the main muscles. I didn't train shoulders, triceps, lats, traps, glutes, etc. I'm sure they've got some work done, but not enough. Do train everything.
A few years ago, I had an opportunity to go hiking. For three days and nights, a group of people was moving from point A to point B, through mountains, plains and streams, sleeping in our bags and tents. It was amazing to experience this.
Even though it was a semi-starters trip, this was a test of durability for me. When I received my backpack, I couldn’t believe that I could walk at least a couple kilometers with it. Heat, weight, constant sunlight, mosquitoes, difficult uphill routes and sores were all tiring us. Each evening I thought: “That’s it. I am not gonna be able to stand, let alone walk tomorrow, even if I want to”. But next day I woke up with enough energy to continue. The struggle was way more than worth it.
Mountains and vast landscapes are astonishing and unforgettable. Stars couldn’t be brighter at night. Water was never before so tasty, especially cold.
I wasn’t using my phone for three days, and it was refreshing too. I can’t help myself and let go of it in normal circumstances, not that I am addicted to it, but still, I use it more than I should. This natural unplug was really nice.
And again, this was my first time, and I never thought that I would like such journey. I would certainly repeat this.
Somehow, many frontend libs and frameworks decided to adopt this new thing, called Signals.
Vue had
something that feels like signals since Composition API came out.
Preact, SolidJS, and Angular all have
singals now.
I think it is a good thing that these frameworks have such similarities.
Most of RxJS
code that I saw was overly complex and unasked for, to be honest.
Yes, RxJS is a powerful tool, but it
seems to me that it was used like a golden hammer.
What frustrates me is that React team decided
NOT to adopt this.
An idempotent action should always be a link.
- Just go with Vercel! Trust me
Otherwise...
- Buy a domain name somewhere
- Set your name servers to point to your VPS provider
- Enter your domain name in Cloudflare SSL
- Replace your name servers with the ones Cloudflare will give you
- Profit!
You now have a domain name with HTTPS!
As I mentioned before, view libraries start to adopt Signals to improve performance and DX.
However, not all
of them do that. My personal opinion is that React is no good in 2023 because of this, it is moving in the wrong
direction, and bringing NextJS down with it (which has it’s problems too, to be fair).
So, what would I choose for SPA?
- Preact (maybe), Vue, SolidJS, Svelte
Preact is in a maybe territory due to the fact that it seems like it is not moving at the same speed like other
libraries.
I would try it out for small apps and see how well it works. And there isn’t really an SSR route
to follow, if the app gets bigger.
What would I choose for SSR?
- Nuxt, SvelteKit, SolidStart
I would really like to use NextJS with Signals (or basically with Preact), but that would be a rough
journey.
And NextJS is making something weird with pages->apps breaking change, and I am not sure about
that.
Many package managers by default add dependencies with possibility to upgrade to a patch version, during an install. The lockfile will be updated, but the package file won’t. I think this behavior is really nasty for two reasons.
First, if you have large enough, say 10, number of libraries, you’ll lose track of what is used right now. Lockfiles are big. And even a dependency tree won’t help much, because you’ll have to compare two sources manually, with your naked eyes. You won’t have to hunt down these changes during upgrade if the package file doesn’t lie to you (versions are the same)
Second, it makes installs, builds and deploys unpredictable. Sure, patches shouldn’t break anything. But I don’t want to take chances. And I really want to ship stuff exactly like it was built, and tested. If an upgrade breaks something, you can catch it right away or hunt it down by looking at what packages were updated recently, instead of guessing what specific package or a combination of packages broke down. This also minimizes a chance that a newcomer dev will have to deal with broken stuff or a different behavior.
Some official, let alone community guides tell users to add a version which only pins library to a major version. I saw this in some Google’s SDKs. This is somewhat common in Android and iOS development, and I had numerous cases where a newer patch version was no good. The articles and guides should specify exact versions, otherwise how do I know which version to use, in case of a problem?
I want my software to be accurate, not
hit-or-miss. You want to know your exact salary, not a guess.
One concept that beginner language learners miss is that at certain point you should just start using it,
the sooner, the better.
And not just using it – you should start learning your target language in that
language. Yeah, English classes in schools and universities nowadays have workbooks and lessons in English.
But some students and self learners still struggle to apply this method outside of classroom.
One of the most powerful things that opened my eyes to this concept was switching my apps and Google Search
language to English. With apps, you familiarize yourself with translations of the things you already
know.
And the use case for switching search language is this – you can search a word in your native
language and Google will present information in your target language. Specifically, it shows you the definition
of a word you are looking for in your target language. It feels like this unlocks a lot of vocabulary
and context. At certain point you won’t have to translate anything back to your native tongue. This is
the moment where you can proudly say that you understand English.
Recently I purchased a Pico 4 VR headset, and the main reason for that was that I wanted to do some physical
activity during work breaks. You know, when the CI/CD pipeline runs, when test suite runs, et cetera, and just
in general to be able to easily stand up and do some excercise. Sure, that seems like overly complex solution
to a simple problem – do some push ups, sit ups and so on.
But the problem is that it is very easy
to forget about it altogether, at least for me. Games, on the other hand, are designed to be addictive.
So I’ve tried Beat Saber. And it turned out to be the best VR game ever. It is just
great.
And the best thing is, you can’t really stress yourself too much (unless you’re playing 100 sit ups
in 3 minutes, but that’s another story). I wish though that there were more wider maps, wider and longer
movements. There are custom maps for that, too.
But I wish it would be more common. Basically, I’ve bought
VR for Beat Saber, and it turned out to be totally worth it.
Unfortunately, the alternatives to Beat Saber
are not even close. I would really much just prefer that Beat Saber integrated some of the features of other
similar games, because it is just better overall, and I myself don’t see any point playing something else.
As for the rest of VR games... It is sketchy at best.
Driving games work OK for me – the only problem that I
have is that I would really really really prefer driving in Forza Horizon, instead of other games. Flight
simulators like War Thunder work great too. Looking around the interior of the vehicle adds
to the immersiveness.
The shooters are... playable. I’ve tried Pavlov VR, but it requires you to hold your weapon with both hands to be
accurate.
And I find that very annoying. Yes, maybe for a super simulation realism mode it would be cool,
but in general it is just not practical. Reloading and all that stuff is done with your hands, and I really
don’t have a problem with that, it works okay.
But I think Vail VR is just better in general. Still,
not as fun to play.
Doom VFR surprised me in a good way, despite negative reviews. I felt that it is
a pretty good VR shooter, really.
Even though I had to turn my head around to look around, because I was
lazy to bind right stick to look around (and maybe that’s not even possible? I am not sure).
Half-Life: Alyx is... neither good or bad.
It looks good (for VR), but the problem lies with its gameplay.
It’s a Half-Life game, so there are lots of breaks between shooting the enemies. I’ve got so frustrated
in the beginning so that I loaded some chapter after that.
I don’t want to sit in VR and solve puzzles.
As a matter of a fact, I disliked it in the original Half-Life series.
I love Portal 1 & 2, but for some
reason I can’t stand solving puzzles in Half-Life.
And since it was one of the first AAA titles for VR,
the movement is strange.
They’ve designed the levels so that you have to “jump” often, but why I can’t jump
just to a press of a button?
Why do I have to teleport?
Btw, there are some cool features in this
game – like climbing the ladders with your own hands. But that’s a one trick pony – you can climb them
by a press of a button and that’s just so much easier, so why bother.
I wish there was some sword fighting FPS slashing game, something like Shadow Warrior. Also, I’d like to play
with lightsaber, you know?
I haven’t tried Blade and Sorcery, but it looks like it is not for me, really.
I’ve tried several virtual drumming “games”, and that’s a cool concept, however... The problem is that each game
of this genre has something really good, but is not fun overall. Paradiddle, Ragnarok, Drums Rock...
I am
certain that is possible to create a good VR drums experience, but it is not there yet.
There are also mods for regular games that add the ability to look around in VR. I haven’t tried those, but I really think that developers should add at least that to their games.
Overall, I have a feeling in most of the VR games when I play them: Why VR?
VR really shines when you benefit from immersiveness (driving, flying), or utilise your hand movement (Beat
Saber, drums).
But apart from that – I am not sure. I like how “3D” effect works, and all that. It really
is cool. But still, I’d play a PC game over VR.
I hope that there’ll be more and/or better games like Beat Saber, or that it’ll receive updates to make it more
versatile (more modes, more different types of movement), that regular games would add VR modes (such as Forza
Horizon, Cyberpunk and such).
Playing 3rd person games in VR is just pointless, by the way.
Previously, I’ve had mixed thoughts about Vue 3. But now I’ve stumbled upon it again, and since I’ve seen decent code written with it, I think I was wrong.
It seems that Vue 3 just got even better, if you think about it.
The ability to write hooks is great on its
own, but Vue 3 gives you complete freedom.
If you add “setup” attribute to the script tag, you won’t have
to return a result from your script and make a dummy setup function.
Honestly, writing Vue 3 code feels refreshing again, like it was with AngularJS and VueJS.
Vue always was
a tool which helps to iterate fast. Now it’s even more smooth.
Previously, in local market a resume wasn’t a requirement. When you have some experience and network, something
like LinkedIn is just enough.
But when I entered global market, resume became relevant. Aaand most
of automatic resume services (including LinkedIn) don’t fit on one page or have some other inconveniences. So I
needed something more serious.
Before I tell you my final solution, here is what I considered:
* resume.io – customization isn’t enough for me
* Figma –
but I am not a designer, this is not for me. Especially such important thing as resume.
* Microsoft
Office, Google Docs and basically and other office software make me clench my teeth in pain
*
Notion seemed adequate, but I missed customization (precise font size, for starters)
*
LinkedIn and similar services are not customizable
* LaTeX – seems like a hardcore solution:
I don’t want to learn one more markup language and I am not sure where can I edit it online (again, how
customizable would it be?)
But I am a web developer. Surely I can make a HTML page I thought! I tried it, and liked it!
To me it seems
like a perfect solution.
Resume, source
code, if you want to laugh at my implementation. You may be shocked, surprised and confused.
Yes,
it is overkill in terms of libs. But I am Frontend Developer, after all! Why not? :) I do what I want, it’s my
resume after all.
Pros and cons
+ Complete freedom, independence and customizability
+ Convenience in comparison with other solutions
(LaTeX/Figma/Office/...), IMO
+ Accessible on the web, always up to date
+ I can add additional
features: say if I want to tweak a resume for a certain company
+ Edit & export anywhere, literally
anywhere
! Someone might say that there’s something wrong with the style, but I can fix that
! It
probably has issues with ATS – but who wants to be judged by an ATS? :) I don’t
Confluence, Notion, Wiki, Jira... what’s common about them?
They’re slow. And often times, clumsy –
in the sense that often times they don’t do what you indended to.
In this post, I want to focus on writing.
Stories, Epics, Specifications, Documentation.
These tools don’t adhere to a common standard. They all have
some kind of WISYWIG editors.
But in my opinion, most of this feature bloat isn’t needed, and even unasked
for.
Instead of writing a coherent text with the most basic formatting possible, people overuse tables’,
dropdowns’ and formatting.
Often times it breaks. I dread editing a table in Jira or Confluence. One
awkward movement and everything is broken.
What’s worse is that these tools can “eat” the thing that you’re
editing and sent it to the void, and unless you copied it or saved it somewhere else, it can be forever lost. It
happened to me at least a dozen of times. Ctrl+Z doesn’t work in these cases.
I wish version control
in these tools would show raw diffs, instead of trying to show something in between.
Information gets lost not only due to unaccaptable software mishaps, it also gets lost due to possibility
of unlimited nesting, broken links. Even more than that: I personally lack the motivation to use this software,
because of the aforementioned reasons.
I wish that Markdown ruled the world of non-programmers too.
I
believe we can have the best of both worlds:
People can even have formatting buttons, and they can even see
the preview without dealing with raw formatting.
But I would much rather write in raw .md, without crazy
heavy WISYWIG solutions.
Btw, is there anything like Notion but .md ?
Speaking about packages, I find that seeing the name of what was imported from where is important.
Consider
this very simplistic and made-up example code:
package com.my.awesome.project;
import java.io.*;
import org.apache.commons.fileupload.*;
public class Main {
public static void main() {
File file = new File("/usr/local/bin/foo/bar");
FileItemFactory factory = new DiskFileItemFactory();
}
}
Can a newbie guess which import comes from?
What if there were 10 imports from 10 different libs and more
code?
I hear you saying: but we have IDE’s. Sure, but didn’t you ever had this problem where a couple of imports were not working? Reference was not resolved due to some kind of refactoring. I find that this is an unnecessary problem out of thin air. Explicit or package named import would work just fine.
I've started my blog with Aegea Engine initially. Basically it is a PHP server with MySQL db, hosted on VPS. AFAIK, it is closed source. The engine is nice and useful, but I wanted to control everything and also cut the cost down to zero or almost zero. And so my first solution was to use Svelte and to statically generate the blog. It wasn't bad, but Svelte doesn't output raw html, which in turn hurts SEO. And also there's too much stuff for a simple blog. So after some time I've rewritten the blog from scratch. It now basically is a bunch of node scripts which turn markdown text files into pages by using simple handlebars templates. It's so simple and easy now, and I do control everything, and as a bonus I get real HTML pages.
For the love of God, stop it with Git Hooks already. It's a pity that you've set them up, because I'm disabling it ASAP hooksPath = /dev/null I'm not going to wait, even for a second for it to pass. Linting, formatting, unit testing and other stuff will never take seconds of time, and won't pass 100% of the time. It hurts productivity. Just set up CI and delete this useless shit, called Git Hooks.
Finding usages and reference sometimes can be hard enough even if we use named exports due to renames, index
files, re-imports, re-exports. I know that most modern editors can do that, but still, your code editor won’t
show you all usages of an entity if it was re-imported or re-exported, even worse if it happened a couple
of times. By that time you’re likely already forgot what you were looking for. I think this is bad too,
but export default is worse.
Things get harder if you’re trying to find something that has no name. Yeah,
your editor can (probably) still show you references of this object, but good look trying to find it
in an organization (across multiple repositories, projects, libraries).
You can’t really rely on a filename
or path either.
Even if this would be possible, it would take too much time to bother doing so.
To make things worse and just for fun, name your file something super generic like `list.js` and import/export
it a couple of times for good measure, so that the person looking for its usages will definitely abandon all
hope.
One time, I was refactoring a component which was default exported and when I searched where it was used, one result wasn’t shown in the search. Because it had a typo. I knew this only because I also searched for its filename, because I wanted to be extra sure.
One of the most infuriating things for me is that when people read news, and then forward it to you and send "shit's fucked" or "that's terrible". More often than not, these news are worthlenss, 99.9% of all news is trash and click bait. Most news won't ever relate to your and my lives, and won't affect it, no matter how scary this news are. What's the most hilarous thing for me is when people share a random talking head's opinion, or a proposal to put a 0.000001% tax law in place for some stupid thing. It's not even news, it didn't happen yet and probably won't even happen at all.
The easiest way to host a static website, be it an SPA or just an HTML page, for the longest time was Github Pages. But it has several serious limitations and I would avoid using it for a serious production project (hosting docs is fine though). A decent alternative previously was Firebase Hosting, but now there's even better alternative. There are many of them, but I want to highlight one of them - Vercel. I've hosted a built static frontend in one click, for a few more clicks I've pointed it to a domain name that I own and it was free.