Category: personal

In no particular order:

• finally learned how to type properly with all of my 10 fingers (instead of just 5-6 before). I’m at 25 wpm right now and that kind of blows, still, it was well worth it, although the learning curve was quite steep. And I’m still not pressing all the right keys with all the right fingers.
• learned vim. The learning curve was even steeper than the typing one. Literally hundreds of shortcuts to remember… Vim is the best editor out there, no doubt about it and I’m very grateful to have finally found out about it.
• first trip in my life to the west (west of Eastern Europe or Poland, my home country). Italy. Snowboard.
• built my own custom stereo speakers system. Top class monitors based on the Peerless drivers. 5.1 system coming in 2010/2011…
• finally moved out of my parent’s house. Still both happy and sad about it.
• quit an uninspiring and not too much intellectually and professionally developing day job.
• took out a mortgage to buy a new flat. A wonderful flat.
• got significant financial help from the government to start my own company. Almost started it in 2009. I’m starting in the first days of 2010.
• planted a seed. A significant seed.

The best goals list for 2010 is to have no goals. Come what may. Embrace the chaos.

From Why can’t we concentrate? by Laura Miller:

IQ tests have to be regularly updated to make them harder; otherwise the average score would have climbed 3 percent per decade since the early 1930s. (The average score is supposed to remain at a constant 100 points.) And IQ measures problem-solving ability, rather than sheer data retained, which has grown even faster over the same interval.

And here I was thinking all these years that we, as a global population, are in fact getting more and more stupid. People getting lower and lower grades, coming out of the Universities knowing less and less – it was all just an illusion. Average IQ is climbing. Steadily. Decade after decade we are getting smarter. It’s only that there are too few measures noticing it. Are IQ tests the only ones measuring it?

(via Brutto)

Yesterday was the day without google. Today was the day without electricity. Now without Google it felt like you didn’t have a right hand, but without electricity, it felt like being crippled. Nothing you could do. Not fun.

Written a long, long time ago, but left unpublished for years. Now coming to light…

Taken at 31st Polish Film Festival in Gdynia at 2006.IX:

Despite the obvious low quality (too much noise, bad white balance, etc.) I like this picture very much. Somehow it captures me.

And my hairdo is spot-on!

Today, similarly to Ryan Dahl I’ve started the quest to make a hundred push ups. During the initial test I’ve made 24. That’s a good start, me thinks.

Update: Unfortunately I only made it as far as week 3. The progress curve was just too steep. I’ve tried several times to make it past week 3 but failed. And that, let me tell you, was not really motivating, so I just kind of let it go.

A couple years ago, I was talking the Institute’s Bob Johansen about wisdom, and he explained that – to deal with an uncertain future and still move forward – they advise people to have “strong opinions, which are weakly held.” They’ve been giving this advice for years, and I understand that it was first developed by Instituite Director Paul Saffo. Bob explained that weak opinions are problematic because people aren’t inspired to develop the best arguments possible for them, or to put forth the energy required to test them. Bob explained that it was just as important, however, to not be too attached to what you believe because, otherwise, it undermines your ability to “see” and “hear” evidence that clashes with your opinions. This is what psychologists sometimes call the problem of “confirmation bias.”

Good life mantra? Who knows…

(via Bob Sutton)