2023 April. Babysitting.
Unproductive month. Almost all the time, someone at home was ill. 5 Tibetan Rites. Tabata.
New posts #
Golang. I've spent some time learning Golang last 12 months and wanted to note what I think about it after passing the syntax and marketing.
Books I'm reading #
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I'm listening to an audiobook in Polish (65 hours long). I don't remember why I bought it, but I decided to finish all my existing audiobooks before I purchase anything new so here we go.
In Polish #
Po piśmie by Jacek Dukaj. This one is in Polish. It's a collection of essays about culture moving from oratory to writing and now to experiences. Really hard to read but interesting.
Books I've read #
You Are Not a Rock: A Step-By-Step Guide to Better Mental Health by Mark Freeman. This is an interesting introduction to ACT Therapy, but the author uses some new metaphors and exercises, so it's worth recommending.
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates. I got this as a present and finally took some time to read it. It's pretty US-centric, especially at the end, but I like the big ideas it's introducing. For example, it argued why electric cars make sense even if their electricity isn't green.
Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think by Tasha Eurich. I was intrigued by this book for a long time and finally had some time to read it. I was expecting something else, but it was enjoyable, and I've picked up a couple of ideas for a short book. It's pretty good.
Some tools.
- Daily Checkin
- Miracle Question
- Use "What?" instead of "How?" questions
The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (Instrumentality of Mankind). One of the classic Sci-Fi from my backlog. Weird, and you can notice it's old but entertaining. I was surprised by how much fantasy was in the older Sci-Fi.
Elsewhere on the Web #
Mateusz Kwaśniewski - Not Your Uncle’s Clean Code (TypeScript Edition). This great talk is from 4Developers 2022.
Hotspot performance engineering fails by Daniel Lemire. Is the 80-20 rule applicable to code performance? Maybe not.
Designing APIs for humans: Object IDs by Paul Asjes. Try adding a human-readable prefix to your UUIDs. Like user_*******
Getting credit for invisible work at the Staff+ level by Ryan Harter
Managing Manager‐less Processes • Fred George • GOTO 2017. From a recommendation, maybe you don't need SCRUM, strict roles, or maybe even managers. Still, it's from the point of view of a manager.
Let It Fail by Max Countryman. I have a hard time agreeing with this one. But I can see situations when it's the only solution.
Andrew Huberman AMA #4: How to achieve a consistent state of motivation?
Regenerate dopamine:
- Sleep
- NSDR
Lower dopamine when it's already low to increase the baseline: - Do hard things you don't want to do, like cold showers.
Music #
Danny Carey | "Pneuma" by Tool (LIVE IN CONCERT). If you want to see expertise in practice, then take a look. I can recommend looking at the reactions of other drummers as well Professional Drummer Reacts Danny Carey Pneuma by Tool LIVE IN CONCERT to better appreciate it.
Personal Thoughts #
It's a super weird month. I've spent most of April caring for someone at home or being sick myself. Still, I had some time to go back to things that worked for me in the past.
The first thing was the Five Tibetan Rites Workout which reminded me of the daily stretching/exercise I was doing when years ago. I decided to get back to it to get some easy exercise and stretching every day.
After that, I started thinking about exercise to increase my energy, reminding me of Tabata regimen that I was doing on a bike. It only takes 4 minutes, and you can find plenty of videos to help you get started, like 4 Minute Tabata - Intense HIIT Workout - No Repeat - No Equipment.
I've set myself a goal to lose weight finally. The goal is 12kg or 26 pounds over the long term, but I will be pretty happy even with half of that. Unfortunately, dieting is pretty hard, but I don't think it's a good idea to try fasting to lose all of it.
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