snackable

 I had an interesting thought today. Over my past few relationships, I generally felt like they weren't right for me. I felt this strange flip-flopping between attraction and lack thereof, both appearance-wise and personality-wise. When I was in the relationship, I felt like I needed out. When I was out, I felt like I wanted them more than ever. I always attributed this to the general notion that you want what you can't have. This might be true, but today I had another idea. Maybe I'm just unhappy, and projecting my unhappiness onto the relationship. When I'm in it, I'm unhappy and I believe I need out. When I was out, I was unhappy and suddenly started feeling like I was missing out on previous happiness. I don't think this means I need to go back to relationships I previously deemed not fitting for me. But I think I need to learn to manage my unhappiness. It seems like it would be key to not ruining my next relationship. 

"A person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life." So little time in life is devoted to choosing values. You would think something so important would be given more thought. An interesting thought I came across was that we have two sets of values. Our theoretical ones - those we wish we adhered to and pursued at all times - and our practical ones - those we truly live our lives by. To live a truly virtuous life would be to have these two sets of values overlap entirely.  I'm going to try to outline my ideal values at the age of 20.  Self discipline. Empathy.  Excellence. Freedom/Independence. I think those are my top four. 

"The ability to control one's feelings and overcome one's weaknesses; the ability to pursue what one thinks is right despite temptations to abandon it." Self discipline is interesting to me. I have been consuming a lot of content based around the idea that some things are difficult to do. I find myself surprised some times at the idea of people being lazy, not working towards goals. I find it easy to do things I value, because I truly value them. I don't value comfort as much as others do. I value achieving my goals. I get addicted to the gym because I want to be fit. I want to be attractive, strong, athletic. Somehow this makes the lifting itself very pleasurable as well.  I like working. I find myself wanting to stay later. Not because I want other people to think I'm working. But because I want to make progress. I want to be productive. I want to move forwards and finish things. I value my work.  Some of this is simply because I don't have so many tempt...

 It's difficult for me to be proud of myself professionally. I enjoy what I do, I think it's important - but I don't feel worthy when I think about M' and the Kernel savvy folks I get to work around. I've never felt drawn to the subject. I don't particularly enjoy low level programming of any sort, reversing, exploiting, etc. I enjoy networks and Python, Clean Code, webdev, all that. Even though these are valuable skills, I still feel like they just aren't as appreciated. Why is that?  Are research and low-level inherently more difficult than development and Opera? Or is it a question of accessibility - those that break the barrier get the glory?  I think I need to decide that I am worthy, I do things that are important and no one else could do. But I can't convince myself that is true. The reason for this is the quantification issue. When someone has a certain skill that is rare, it is inherently more impressive. - because it's difficult to quantify...

 Certain things are factual. They exist.  We tend to represent things that exist in different ways. Our representations tend not to be true.  This isn't always the case - some representations can be tied in certain ways to the absolute truth. Here are some examples of things that are tightly dependent on the truth, and some that aren't. Let's start with code. Code is, by definition, the truth - what is written will happen. Sometimes code can be misleading though. Dirty, convoluted code can mislead us as to what is happening. We might interpret it in untruthful ways - there might be side effects we didn't notice, etc. This is why it's important to write clear, expressive code. Next up, we have documentation in code. Comments, docstrings, etc. These can be truthful - but certainly aren't the truth. There's a difference - and having a false piece of documentation can throw us off of our goal of quickly learning the truth when we are reading code. This can happe...

 I taught my first networks lesson.  I'm super stressed out about it. What are my takeaways: 1. Shorter lessons, with breaks. 2. Ask questions, even stupid ones. 3. Don't apologize. 4. Prepare ahead of time.  5. Give things to try out at home. 

I've spent a lot of time recently learning things. The past year has been one long period of learning - studying for Psychometrics, Amnon, Hibur, and now in the team. Along the way I spent some time learning alone too - doing Euler, Natas, React & Django, Fluent Python and Understanding the Linux Kernel. Some of the things I learnt were in other fields too, like reading the Selfish Gene and Rich Dad Poor Dad, as well as watching videos on Statistics and Economics on CrashCourse. After all this learning, I realized how weirdly my mind retains information. I don't actually learn and become knowledgeable in the fields, but I suddenly have these connections that I didn't have previously. Things click, but I can't explain them in depth.  What became clear to me is that actually experiencing things, practicing them, is absolutely key to retention. Just copying code or reading or listening isn't enough to allow you to explain the subject to someone. You need to use the...