Ask HN: What is the most exciting thing you have learnt this year till now?
Maybe it is a life hack, a new topic, a new recipe, etc. Whatever YOU think is exciting to you. That I can survive being laid off. That emotionally, it won't crush me to find out my company decided I was in the 20% that wasn't needed anymore. That financially, my family can get by if I spend 11 weeks unemployed. That I can accept a job that pays significantly less than I used to make. I really did think that the entire experience was going to leave me the empty shell of my former self, that the mental toll would leave me severely depressed, and that my world would be shattered. None of that happened. I had a great summer. My exciting discovery is that I no longer define myself purely in terms of my career. I had the opposite experience. I thought I would easily survive a layoff, but now it looks not so likely. Numbers game, go submit 100 applications, get 25 interviews, get 3 offers. Go. Yeah it’s a little too late for that. My lease is up at the end of the month, my savings have been battered from attrition and emergency expenses and the rental market is ridiculous here (not that that matters without income anyway). I submitted plenty of applications, got few interviews, got passed up for most of the roles. I no longer have time to wait on onerous bureaucracies. Hell I was hoping for an offer this week, but both myself and the recruiter are at a loss as to what the company decided. I got another email the other day informing me that some job I applied to months ago was just straight up canceled. The real problem was I didn’t quite understand how things had changed and was desperate to avoid moving. I should have just taken an on site role and moved a long time ago. Honestly, that's part of why I took the pay cut. I only applied to jobs that were remote, because I love the lifestyle. The job I wound up with wanted me hybrid, but I negotiated for remote. I've got a young kid, and that time I'd have been commuting is time I get to spend with her. But if I'd been open to hybrid jobs, I'd likely have had more opportunities, and more money offered. lol, yes it's a numbers game but your rates are off by an order of magnitude IMHO and experience. What an eye opening experience! Getting laid off can feel like an emotional rollercoaster and it's great that you were not only able to ride that wave but also, as you mentioned, reprioritize your life in such a way that you no longer tie your identity strictly to your career. I too recently, in the last year or so, come to the same terms; as a millenial, I'm now finding activities outside of "work" (behind the keyboard) enjoyable and guiding some of my long term goals. Related: that it won't get you kicked out of the country (in Germany). It's a common fear for immigrants, and it turns out that it's unfounded. You get a few months to find something else. > I no longer define myself purely in terms of my career. I've been struggling with this. Any tips? Hobbies, relationships, religion. Jobs can effectively squeeze your time and energy such that the above are hard to come by, making career self-definement a default path for many people. I'm a new parent this year and I was not mentally prepared for it (lol is anyone?) For a few months, I regretted my decision to have kids almost constantly. It gnawed on me. Then I stumbled upon the regretfulparents subreddit. Seeing the posts was pitiful. I saw how destructive it is to our psyches to carry around regret and let it wear us down. I cringed seeing the posts, mostly because I felt the same way they did, and man it does not look pretty. I do not want to be like the people on that subreddit. It almost disgusted me I remember when I was younger I always said I don't regret anything I do. I seem to have forgotten that mantra, so I picked it back up I no longer regret being a parent. I still don't enjoy it the majority of the time. But it is what it is. There's no point of drowning myself in my own mental garbage when life is trying to drown me already. So what I (re)learned is not to live with regret, and sometimes shared suffering can remind me that it's really not that bad and I don't need to force suffering on myself for no reason Around the 6 months mark is when the baby starts reacting to you. Smiling, copying you, trying to eat food. To me it was a big motivator because in the previous months it's hard to see any meaning in all the effort that I pour out, because the baby was completely useless. From then on it's less and less useless over time, and they do things like playing and learning to walk. Many of these things don't make it easier for me. Some may even make it harder, but just a little bit. Not having to wake up every few hours is the big release though. So over time, it's less work and more satisfaction, which to me is an ongoing motivator. Another big jump for me was when we start going to a child care, at around the 12 months mark. It's a huge relief. My wife and I have time to try and resume "normal" life. The baby learns more things at school and sees more people. It costs quite a bit but we don't talk about it :) I'm hopeful it will be less and less work, but I have already made peace with the fact that I will never be back to "normal". We will probably stress about the baby until we die. The good thing is, the sense of progress and satisfaction seems to scale very well, while the work is mostly flat. Surprisingly my wife and I are already talking about the next baby, because the work would still be mostly flat and the sense of progress / satisfaction would be doubled. My daughter is 2 now so I'm a little "ahead" of you. Hope this little bit of personal experience helps. Using an old throwaway for privacy reasons. My son is just about to turn 3 and my daughter is mearly 1. Please be aware that the second child isn't the same amount of work. It more than double - quadruple? It's as hard to explain how much harder a second child is as it is to explain how tough the first would be to someone with none. People tell you that having a kid will take all your free time but it's not really true because one parent can relax while the other foes something with one. When you have a second, the wife be fully occupied with the second and you will become primary care for the first. You're both suddenly single parents. The internal fortitude required to single handedly entertain a toddler exceeds anything I've ever had to do before. Thanks for this. It makes a lot of sense. I will tell my wife and we'll scratch our heads discussing it. But I already have a vague feeling we may end up with the famous last words "how hard can it be" :) What's your opinion on these "mitigations" just off the top of my head? I won't argue. Just finding food for thought. - I'm already writing off the first 6 or 12 months after the birth of the second kid. It will be hell. No question about that. But when (if?) we are able to send the second kid to child care we should have a chunk of day time that is "free". Not to discount your experience but I imagine you have just gone through the hardest part. - It should be easier when the first kid is older? I know it's not realistic to expect the first kid to actually help but at least they aren't trying to kill themselves all the time. I'm hoping to find some activities that would allow me to spend maybe 70% attention to the second kid and 30% to the first, and have them both be not too pissed off. - Other economy of scale things? Get both kids to go to the same child care. Going to the park together. Eat together etc Hi, parent of 4 here.
Yep, the change from 1->2 is as hard as from 0->1. After 2+ it's log2n, not even linearly harder. The chores & experience you already have, you don't have less time ( because you don't have any anyway) and you just ruthlessly priorize between tasks. With two child you need to have a way to create free time to yourself. It's doable but it requires conscious effort, it's not the default mode anymore. They will play with each other a lot and that gives free time back. With one child you are the only one she can count on in the early years. Sibling in my view are essential to build emotional intelligence, the skill to be able to lose and try again, cooperate and fight, and able to find a compromise. Around 5 or 6year+ they start to actually help. After the first child I missed my childless life. After the 4th I really don't, it really helped me grow many ways I did not thought was possible. The first 6 months are incredibly difficult, as there's nothing to do but cry and feed. It will never be perfect, but it gets better. > It gets better One perspective that helped me was "little people, little problems". In few years they might be drinking your booze and stealing your car. Mine are five and eight now. There's still rarely 15 minutes. Somebody's hungry, somebody's hitting somebody, somebody's having another meltdown. On occasion though, they get interested in whatever I'm doing though, so that's nice. > but it gets better Parents say this, but looking at their lives and talking to them, it doesn't. I think you just get used to it, or develop a sort of stockholm syndrome. Maybe you sleep a little better so it's easier to mentally cope with it Nonsense. As a parent of an 8 & 10 year old, I'll emphatically disagree with you here. It 100% gets better - every year, they're more fun and more independent. Talk to any parent who's kid has just left for college and the vast vast majority of them actually feel overwhelmingly sad when it happens. It is mostly better sleep, one of the better coping mechanisms available to humans. It is also the transition going from sheer terror of creating life, to accepting that there is no perfect parenting. No, it does get better. The first year is just constant lack of sleep and disruption. As they get older they get more entertaining and need less constant attention. Parent of 3 (soon to be 4) year old here ... Thanks for sharing. First off, I think it's normal to experience the feelings of regret when first having a child. Those first few months (maybe even years) can actually feel worse: less (sometimes no) sleep, less freedom (for other activities), less intimacy. The list goes on and on. But, as you recognized, focusing on the negatives can be self reinforcing. At the same time, being a parent (for me) fills me up in ways I've never experienced before. A joy ... love ... that got lost in childhood. And raising a child is not (again, for me) something I can/want to pull off on my own, with only my wife and I. It really does take a whole village and I'm no longer sold on the nuclear (American) family — just mom and dad – raising children. Anyways, sending you lots of vibes from one parent to another. We moved to be closer to family - don't know how people do it without help. Those people must be mad > I'm no longer sold on the nuclear (American) family — just mom and dad – raising children. It's not tenable with the complexities and expenses of modern life. It may have been tenable in the 1950s-70s when US prosperity for the middle class was maybe at a global all time high Parent of 4, here. I think you just need to change your POV: when you think of it, it doesn't make any sense to choose to have kids...less free time, less sleep, more expenses, more commitments and the list goes on. But then think of how many things we choose to do which don't make sense, but we still do because we want to. Having kids will give you a whole new perspective about life, IMHO, about love (mostly, there's no other way you can feel that kind of love), about learning to say NO just because you start valuing your time more, maybe even taking more care of your health, because you want to be there, you want to be in good shape and having the energy they need. When feeling negative sentiments/resentment popping up, think this: it wasn't their's decision to be born, it was yours, so they are not guilty of X. Having kids is an egoist decision we make as parents, but then a lot of parents blame their kids for this or that. Not their fault, not anyone's fault really. It is what it is, as with most things in life. Just take care of your sleep, of the relationship with your partner (this is huge! otherwise the family will crumble as will your relationship) and enjoy the ride with an open mind. Savour the little things, for as much as it is trite rhetoric, they will soon be gone, replaced by different ones, but you'll have only one first smile, one first word, one first step, etc, for each kid, and those you want to cherish. It's a choice we have to make with everything in our lives: complain about everything going wrong/missing, or simply living and enjoying what you have in the moment. It will be a lot of work, but more fun than you could ever imagine. Good luck! Dude being a parent is the HARDEST thing anyone will ever do. People that don't agree are either wealthy or full of shit with horrible children IME. To anyone reading this: It is A-OK to feel what you feel (regret, guilt, fear, etc) its what you do with those feelings that matter. The first year of parenthood is absolutely miserable with the lack of sleep and quick milestones changing (for the better, usually) the routines. It. Gets. Better. But its work and you gotta take care of you. Cant pour from an empty cup, etc etc. Build a support network and use it. Is it because life's difficulties are generally amplified with kids? I've never truly regretted having kids, but I had my first one when I was barely making more than minimum wage and somewhat in debt. Hell we didn't even have health insurance, so we couldn't go to the hospital and had to opt for an at-home birth. All of the stress that life was pushing on me was magnified 100x when that baby came. At the end of the day I would I sleep snuggling next to my child though and all the pain would kind of wash away. That alone made parenting worth it somehow. Honestly my kids are the only thing that keep me alive. I have a persistent deep hatred for the world - almost always have - and I've contemplated suicide many times in my life, but my children keep me going. I will be here as long as they are. There is nothing more soothing than seeing them smile. The rare times that I get a chance to just sit still, I find myself observing all the small things they do and appreciating their innocence in it. Almost everything we interact with in the modern world is fake, but the one thing that is truly genuine is the love between parent and child; especially in their youth. > when I was younger I always said I don't regret anything I do A better angle is: Don't act in such a way that you'll regret it. That advice doesn't tackle dealing with things you regret. But neither does "I regret nothing!" -- it is not instructive as to what is good, or how to process events, it just gives a free pass to any behavior. Only young people and Edith Piaf say this. > it just gives a free pass to any behavior. Totally disagree. I am not free from the consequences of my actions. I'm simply saying it's a waste of mental energy to drag yourself down based on events that happened in the past. You can learn from things you've done and if something was a mistake in hindsight, you can avoid those mistakes in the future. But I try not regret making any mistakes I've made because there's no point. You can't objectively judge your decisions if they're clouded in an emotional haze > it's a waste of mental energy to drag yourself down based on events that happened in the past I completely agree. But I'm trying to make the distinction between "don't obtain debt" and "don't pay debt". > if something was a mistake in hindsight, you can avoid those mistakes in the future There's a word for the process of concluding that something was a mistake: regret. I think the difference in understanding comes from what we put into the word. Regret is a word loaded with emotion. If the purpose is to say "don't beat yourself up endlessly", I 100% agree. But beat yourself up a little and let go. :-) Preventing mistakes requires regretting them. Make sure you video record yourself playing peek-a-boo... I have a recording, and all this time later, it still makes me irrationally happy every time I watch it. I also noticed, because I took a ton of photos, that Sproutlet had at least 5 different faces while growing up... it's fascinating. But...yeah, it's tough in the beginning. Not an achievement at all considering we are on HN, but earlier this year I made my first website. It’s just a little personal site that’s hosted on GitHub pages. It’s a skill I’ll definitely utilize again in the future so I’m quite happy about it :). I'm in the same boat, at its heart it's very simple HTML and CSS, but I've never done anything like it before and figuring it all out has been surprisingly fun! If it happens to be a blog, the other month there was a post here asking users to share their blogs[1], and shortly after someone popped up with a blog roll[2] you can submit it to! Comparison is the thief of joy. You absolutely hit an achievement. Congratulations! * How to feel my emotions and not suppress them or push them away. And why that matters in everyday life. * The power of letting go of perceived control or outcomes and just focusing on what I can do now in the moment. * How to be open and vulnerable and why it matters for building relationships. > * How to feel my emotions and not suppress them or push them away. And why that matters in everyday life. Yes!! This is huge. Feeling emotions is so critical and a fundamental skill learned in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). And if I can add to that, NAMING the emotion itself levels one up too. As you mentioned, somatically feeling (e.g. "my heart is racing faster than it normally does", "I am starting to sweat", "my throat is constricting") goes a long way and if you can accurately identify the emotion (e.g. fear, anxiety, anger) then you are on the path to mastering emotional regulation. Yup! Berne Brown’s Atlas of the Heart is great for this because it's a big list of emotions with detailed explanations of each. Wow, how did you do that? Any advice? Not really advice, but I can share what I went through. It started happening on its own once I found a way to feel safe and secure. I grew up never having felt completely safe even at home because my father was alcoholic so I had a chaotic home life. And I learned that I always needed to be on guard even at home or in my room. So quitting my job and letting my wife totally support us for a 6 months while I reassessed my life and let go of being the “breadwinner”/man of the house was key. But hard. I made SV money and she makes $18/hr. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And the scariest. But Berne Brown was a powerful voice to help me choose a direction and learning how to connect with others. Just feeling empathy for others isn’t enough. People will be suspicious or think you’re fake if you don’t reciprocate openness/vulnerability. That I in fact, DO have ADHD, and that's at least part of the reason I failed so miserably in high school, couldn't finish college, and struggle to finish tasks at work despite feeling highly motivated. Not only that, treatment is working for me. I don't have much to add other than that I'm proud of you for realising this and finding a solution that works for you. Kudos Thanks! It feels like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I see this a lot, but I will go out on a limb to tell you ADHD is not the reason for your failures. You probably already know this, but it feels better to blame it on something you think is beyond your control. How did you get a diagnosis? Everywhere in my area has a 6 month+ waiting period. That was basically my experience too, it was about 4 months from a GP referral to a psychiatrist evaluation then back to the GP to try out different medications. So far we’ve only tried Atomoxetine and Wellbutrin, want to avoid stimulants if possible. Not as the most exciting thing but some lifehack to reduce daily chore: I bought electric shaver. I tried decade ago one but didn't enjoy. I always hated chore of shaving - you have to soften your skin, put some foam, make sure your razor is sharp (many time it isn't and you run out of new one), do many runs with razor on your skin, hit razor on the sink so it's not clogged, after shaving clean yourself and razor again and dry yourself and hopefully you don't have any cuts. With electric razor: - these days they are small and can be charged with usb-c - don't require and water or foam (just dry shaving) - all your face hairs are inside the shaver head and not floating everywhere around your sink - shaver is magnetic and easy to remove and then just dump down your hairs to sink - don't have any cuts and don't have to change shaving head (probably one a year or less) - I bought cheap one (Enchen) with 3 heads for like 20$ If you procrastinate to shave yourself every (second) day give it a try. I absolutely love tips like these. Sometimes we settle into patterns in life that we just accept, even if they're not ideal. Learn how to do something and we end up doing it that way forever. Then someone reminds you that not only do you not enjoy that pattern, but there's a different and better way to do it! OK, my "most exciting thing" is pretty boring, which says something about me ;-) But I discovered how easy it is to make oven fries: [0] Easy, customizable, and healthier than regular French fries. I love them! On that same theme, I've learned the basics of bread making recently, and it's been exciting to me to realize how easily I can make bread that's far better than anything at the grocery store. When I realized that I could 'win' by just using flour, water, and salt, it felt like I had unlocked one of life's cheat codes. I have too - It’s pretty great. I’m have recently discovered proofing in a cold environment, the kitchen in winter or even the fridge. It looks like nothing has happened, but shape the dough and cook it and you get spectacular oven rise. This year I learned of Nigel Slater's Lazy Loaf recipe which is basically an Irish soda bread. It's bread, but without the faff of yeast, rising, punching down, proving. Wait until you come to Germany and buy a bread at a bakery ;) Ha! I lived in Germany for three years, across the street from a bakery. It was shocking to me that they didn't want to serve coffee 'to go' German bread is excellent. I prefer my sourdough, but I haven't been to Germany in nearly 20 years, so perhaps my memory is rusty. This annoys me to no end! There _IS_ good bread in the US too. You just need to ignore the bread aisle of supermarkets! In the US, good bread must be actively sought out. It is not available everywhere. > buy a bread at a bakery ;) Pretty sure every bakery I've been to in the US has had good bread. In places I’ve lived in the US finding a bakery, outside a supermarket, isn’t a trivial task. Especially because too many "bakeries" only do sweets and donuts. That too. Fair Yes! We discovered this during the pandemic, but usually cut more like classic French fries. Wedges like that recipe are also great. I used to hate making fries, messy and they're always too soggy, but done in the oven they're easy peasy and always great. I tried making Cream cheese for the first time in the last few weeks. It turned pretty decent (if not a little overwhelming in flavor.) I get a lot of satisfaction out of making these kinds of staple items. Trivial things: The busy beaver fast growing function, and how turning machines represent "all things computable". Somehow this was an epiphany I never realized... I always thought "x can be represented on a turing machine", and this itself always seemed like "so what." All it really means to me is you can play doom in your _random thing_ thats turing complete. Once I learned about the busy beaver function however, and n state turing machines, I had a massive epiphany that ive been thinking about it backwards. Whats better is to think that some N-State turing machine can represent EVERY POSSIBLE THING THAT CAN BE COMPUTED (!!!). And its like starting at the top of a very large infinitely tall pyramid, with an N(1) state turing machine and all its permutations of computation, and then N(2) and onwards. In this case, all the answers of the universe (or at least within the computational realm) exist within some N state turing machine in this pyramid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmAc1nDizu0 Work things: typescript, nuxt 3, and converting my ENTIRE 10+ year vim config to fancy Neovim with full LSP support. That I'm a slow and careful thinker who needs peaceful days and a slow life. Little things like looking at the sky, drinking coffee, writing in my journal, taking analog photos, these bring me a sense of self and calmness that I need in order to process life properly, and I shouldn't try to be anything else in order to fit in. How do you manage to create this sort of time? The honest answer is chance. I happen to be studying somewhere that gives me an extra-ordinary amount of freedom, and I'll be using it soon to visit Morocco (to do research and write). I also happen to be surrounded by a friend group that are deeply tied to the music industry, and because I'm an illustrator/designer/artist, I can help musicians in that field with album art, music video animations, printing and so on. It's mutually beneficial, but I didn't plan to meet the right people at the right time. The more "self-made" answer is that I'm ruthless about cutting people out of my life who make me feel bad in ways that can't be solved through communication or a good heart-to-heart. I have a feeling that this puts me into better situations sometimes, because people recognise integrity/self-respect and want to be a part of that. I also am a fanatic about spending at least 15 min every day in nature, which is where I drink my coffee. This is my morning routine, come rain or shine. Other things I do to help this lifestyle: - Wake up without alarm (unless I have a meeting) - If I'm at parties, grab fresh air occasionally - sometimes you'll get good company out there too, and you can recalibrate - Saying no to things that other people think are fun, but I don't - I don't read for hours on end - 30 min at a time is enough, then reflect - Wear clothes that don't feel modern and sophisticated, a vintage shirt can do a lot to your slow-life mentality - I've never worked with anything that requires me to work overtime or be on-call I think the point isn't to have hours and hours of unlimited time to think, but to take breaks in between activities, and carve out consistent 15-30 min slots for your brain to settle down again. Take as much stress out of your life as you can, without making that a stressful activity as well. Thanks for the answer. Enjoy Morocco! The Atlas mountains are my favorite part. I recently learned about the (Linux) sockets. Wrote two simple "echo client" and "echo server". Then monitored the traffic over Wireshark and witness the 3 way TCP handshake.
Then make the server to use "selectors" and learned a bit more about the names I have been hearing for a while: 'select', 'poll', 'epoll'. This is when things start to "click" for me. Nothing astounding but these little things got me excited! PS: Too excited that I even made a presentation to share with people from work.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LAdJ4iK-RJVxuIo61RLU... Learned how far I can push myself physically and mentally in my first Ultra Cycling event (2400km). Not sure I'll do another one, but it was a good experience and at at an age where performance will start decreasing from here. I need to do a write-up. > at an age where performance will start decreasing from here Challenge that idea That stacking stimulants is the wrong approach...instead stack weak stimulants along with herb MAO inhibitors to optimize output. My bias is that I have ADHD with anxiety mixed in. Best way to describe is that if one takes Adderall one gets a push pull effect where you are in focus robot mode whereas with this approach its a focus mode with whole environment awareness without the uncomfortable push pull effects. Can you provide more specifics? What is the “weak stimulant?”. Caffeine? Which MOA herb? Could be of benefit for others who have tried adderall but found the robot-mode to be an unideal way to live. For instance if you love sports or fast reaction video games adderall really hurts performance in those areas. Sounds like you have a solution and would be interested in hearing more about it. Maybe your most exciting thing learned could be someone else’s! I also believe I may have some form of ADHD, and I find this self-optimization idea where people start taking drugs to optimize their productivity a bit dangerous. Keep in mind that productivity for your job isn't everything that makes you yourself. I know quite a few people who took ADHD medication and became super good at their job at the cost of everything fun including their personal life. Sometimes it might also be OK to tell yourself "It's okay I am not as productive as person XYZ, it's not because I am lazy but because I have ADHD". It's not just your job though, it creeps into everything you do and it affects you more than people without it realize. Even if you want to get something done (house project, cleaning, making appointments) it's very difficult to complete these tasks due to the distractions you meet along the way. It's like if you had a spotify playlist of 400 songs you really want to listen to, but by the time you hear the first 5 seconds of the intro, the song skips to the next one, ad nauseam, all day long, every day of your life. As someone who has resisted medication his entire life, I totally understand your sentiment. Medication definitely isn't for everyone and it comes with its own costs. That said, I have decided more and more in my adult life that I am not going to struggle needlessly. If doing so only affected me, fine. But when I have a shitty day(s) at work because I didn't get anything done, my wife gets to hear about it. My family gets to experience me being less jolly. Etc. My focus these days is on being the best person not only to myself but to those around me. That means if I need to take some stupid pill to enable robot-mode then that's what I need to do. I've tried the "don't let your work output be your identity" approach. That ship sailed in elementary school man. Success & output are weaved into your psyche from a very young age. To truly divorce myself from that burden I would need to completely change my life and go live in a commune somewhere. Not realistic. And for the record, I actually really don't like the feeling of being on medication. It turns me into a robot with slow reaction time. Great for reading a book or focussing on some boring work... But horrible for the things I love in life which are all fast-paced sports and video games. If I can avoid medication, I absolutely will. Isn't it sad that we live in a society where you're forced to take medication that doesn't make you feel better personally so you can fulfill other peoples (and your own) expectations? I feel like in a better world you would just find a job that plays well with your ADHD. It might be because I'm young, but I refuse to accept that I have to take medication just to fulfill expectations. Building circuits. I'm still at the stage of merely soldering things together over I2C/SPI/UART, but it's tons of fun. My current project is designing a keyboard from scratch - I plan to have a central 'hub' with an LCD connected to N auxiliary devices: two to start (a split keyboard). I plan to add a macropad and a rotary encoder later on. I started using LaTeX, Vim and Emacs this year. Steep learning curve but so worth it, especially Vim. Thank you, Bram! why all three instead of getting really good at one? I discovered Electric Clojure and built a few toy apps with it. Turns out unifying frontend and backend code simplifies web app development greatly! Exciting to me because it drastically lowers my activation energy for building new projects. To activate the sauna steam button in my local swimming pool, you actually have to pour water over it. It's not a push button like I thought. Likely trite, but: I learned that I'm continuously learning far more than I realize— but that if I don't log what I learn somehow (journal, notes, essays), I'm left with a far fainter sense of accumulation & a far weaker understanding overall. Practically, I learned how to fully clean stainless steel pans (boil vinegar after cooking; baking soda scrub if really filthy). I learned to lose weight by eating more fat. I can run generative AI (text and images) on my measly laptop. It's not the fastest thing I've ever seen, but it's a lot of fun. Desperately hoping for a "Stable Diffusion for audio" that you can run locally in the near future. Mechanical keypad locks dont require you to input the code in a certain order. If the code is 0451 you can unlock it with 1054 or any other combination of those numbers. It's not exciting exciting, but it's oddly novel to show off. Wow! That’s means a four-digit mechanical lock would only have 210 possible combinations. Seems pretty easy to brute-force. You mean 1045 right? You could have any combination of 0 1 4 5 and it'll work as long as you use the same numbers the same amount of times as the original sequence. I can't say that I "learned Lisp" this year, but I took my first tentative steps in Lisp. It has been eye opening for sure and I'm excited to learn more. Congrats! You're in for a trip. It's not one big epiphany but lots of little ones. fzf! I even wrote a whole tutorial on it :) https://andrew-quinn.me/fzf/ Excitement for me is measured on a scale of how fast I go from "wtf is this" to "omg think of the possibilities" and given that I was working as a very shell-heavy cloud admin for the first half of this year this quite handily topped the list for me. I started searching for pasta recipes in Italian and it worked fantastically, feels like learning the things that will become a trend in english youtube videos 3 years from now. I feel like I've learned so many useful techniques and ideas that I can just improvise really really high quality pastas whenever I want now. It's fantastic. Share some of said recipes, you smug dog! I always want to up my pasta game. I'm still arguing with my extending family about the amount of salt in the pasta water... baby steps Camping pasta: Have Swiss egg helix pasta, exactly the right amount of water, some bouillon powder, triple concentrated tomato paste, pepper and a dash of cream. Cook till soaked up (takes 10 minutes). Serve with slices of gruyère. (This is sacrilegous but done right it tastes very good and is simple to cook, you need only one pot and it is done quickly even on camping gas.) I bought a 400g can of triple concentrate thinking it was chopped tomatoes (I'm in Greece, I do not speak Greek). It is fate. Gruyère sounds good, thanks for sharing! I learned that people often take offense to questions, especially “why” questions. I don't have the attribution but love this quote:
“A good question doesn’t give advice, check hypotheses, impose a perspective, share an opinion, make a suggestion or leave the other person feeling judged or cornered.” Large corps don't care about you. I’ve realized that going above and beyond by putting in 10 times the effort doesn’t always earn the recognition one might expect; it can even lead to unforeseen challenges. My family started implementing a “poor week” or as my wife prefers a “free week” where we pick 1 week a month that we don’t spend any money. This has greatly reduced our overall spending. How color management works. I learned that air frying is the most efficient, and clean way to cook a steak. It doesn't smoke up the house(the smoke is also harmful), cooks fast, and tastes delicious. Make some food with my tiny oven.
Before this year, I just only use the tiny oven to heat frzen food. But now I realize cured meat with common seasoning are very easy and it taste good. I’ve discovered that spreadsheets with checklists are more effective for personal and recurring tasks than any to-do list app I’ve tried – plus, you control the data. Power laws and how many there are once you start to recognise them. Learned: Always over-communicate all system changes, no matter how small Learned: Asynchronous daily chat updates are just as effective as stand-ups I learned that Marijuana is not as innocuous as it seems and causes major social withdrawal symptoms, sleep and memory issues. Might need to have your ambitions, dreams, hopes, prayers, and goals, but life has a way of working itself out every time. How to ride a motorcycle. I learned to stop scheduling meetings on Mondays or Fridays high performance gamedev with cpp17, physx, wickedengine, clion, and linux. it feels amazing to be able to spend time inside the program as it develops. That there's actually reasonable arguments for biking without a helmet[1]. That bicycling is way more fun than walking or running. Even slow casual bicycling around a local area. Even on an old low cost bike. I used to have to force myself to go jogging; walking for exercise is so so so boring even with podcasts/audiobooks. Now I positively want to go out biking most days. I had a mountain bike ~15 years ago and all the clip-on shoes and helmet and drove to hills and cycled off-road and it was huge effort and work, and I never enjoyed it as much as my friends did. Now I have a basic heavy squeaky bike and get on it and ride. I like being able to sprint and coast, instead of sprint and stop while jogging. Being able to zig-zag side to side and feel the dynamics of the bike and my balance as it moves. Being able to move faster than walking while putting in less effort than walking. Feeling the wind as if I'm in a car with open windows or no roof (less intensley, but the same kind of pleasant sensation). Riding with no hands on the handlebar, feels like how bikes 'should' be ridden - more like the motions of walking but moving faster. Or maybe I would like one with higher, curved back handlebars for a more relaxed riding position. [1] don't just stop wearing a helmet in a North American city riding on an 8-lane stroad with highway speed traffic, or a ride on the British A roads alongside traffic. But Dutch people don't normally wear helmets because their city design prioritises keeping bikes and cars separate, and keeping bike routes safe at crossings and junctions, and they aren't riding fast or racing. Most injuries of non-racing urban bicyclists involve motor vehicles, and the idea that an inch of polystyrene will protect you from a Ford F250 doing 60mph should be a head scratcher not a no-brainer. I would link "Why I stopped wearing a bike helmet" by former editor-in-chief of Bicycling, the world’s largest cycling magazine - https://www.cyclingtips.com/2018/11/commentary-why-i-stopped... but it appears to be gone from the site and from the Wayback machine. He also made the point that people say they wear helmets (or make their children wear them) for safety, but then choose helmets based on price and style, rather than safety rating and crash test results, which suggests they don't do it for safety. Also children should wear them. The reason I'm making a point of "without helmet" is because it reduces the friction of going out and riding, and it reduces the sweaty head, untidy hair, "where do I put my helmet while in the shop" concerns, and having something strapped to your face/head feels bad. Plus nobody hounds the elderly to wear helmets when out walking in case they fall, but if safety was your top concern, you would. There are a few studies about the probability and severeness of accidents with bikers and helmets. The gist: wearing a helmet will slightly lower the severeness, but will rise slightly the probability. Best overall protection: a blonde, long haired wig. Edit: of course on streets. Biking down a mountain etc are different. Does the Dutch authorities think that riding without an helmet is safer for YOU or is it a game of big numbers- more people will ride if there is no helmet requirement which is better and safer for the community as a whole?
2020: To not busywait.
2021: To be humble.
2022: That I work for myself.
2023: That not spending money makes me happier than spending money.