2023 July. Reading Books and being a Frontend Instructor.
Books I'm reading #
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I'm listening to an audiobook in Polish and I'm 16 hours in of 65 hours.
Point and Line to Plane by Wassily Kandinsky. I've seen a recommendation for it to get a little bit of art theory. While I'm skeptical I want to make my own opinion.
Books I've read #
Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald M. Weinberg. This was an easy and a little funny read. It's a book from 1985 and a lot of its ideas are part of the working culture now. Not only consulting, so it's good to see them in the original context. I can recommend it.
The Four Horsemen: The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolution | Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett, Stephen Fry (Introduction). Disappointing. Just watch the video if you're interested. I found one on youtube
A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout. I like the idea of Deep Modules and a related idea that different levels of abstraction should have different APIs. I was a little underwhelmed, but it's pretty short and worth reading for the ideas it's having.
The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work by Teresa Amabile, Steven Kramer. This is a book managers and executives should read. Down to earth and practical collection of ideas of what to do and what to avoid doing based on feedback from real people and teams in various work cultures and organizations.
Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy. Turns out we don't know as much about Caesar as movies would make you think, but for someone that lived 2 thousand years ago I was astonished at what we do know. I have to admit that the book made me realize how big and impressive was the Roman Republic and the scale of things at the time.
Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow by Dominica Degrandis. I like this one. It's short, has a lot of images to learn from and is fun to read. It's about the basics, but I can still recommend it.
The Modern JavaScript Tutorial. Good for refreshing your JS skills or learning modern JS from the start.
Elsewhere on the Web #
Academia is BROKEN! - Harvard Fake Data Scandal Explained. This one just builds upon my existing disappointment with psychology research.
Conspiracy theory: Electric cars make more air pollution than gas cars
Google shattered human connection by André Staltz
Breakfast is literally a scam.
I Waited 15 Years For These New Array Methods. 8 minutes about new methods like toSliced, toSorted and others.
Pixel Art Tips from a Professional Artist - Tips & Tricks. 8 minutes intro to Pixel Art.
Personal Thoughts #
I've been doing a 3 day fast (from Sunday evening until Thursday lunch) mixed with mostly normal eating (but, skipping breakfasts) for the last couple of weeks. While fasting is uncomfortable, I've lost a lot of weight while having a pretty good mood along the way. I've managed to do and read much more in July as well so feeling hungry and tired in 1-2 days a week doesn't seem to impact my overall productivity.
I've been teaching the frontend module (15 hours) in a bootcamp in July. My group was motivated and eager to learn making it a fun and rewarding experience for me.
Next month I hope will be about:
- Continuing my fasting diet on most weeks
- Taking a family vacation. Kindergarten is closed so we've planned a bunch of activities to do.
- Use a Kanban "TODO" column for my personal and home projects.
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