Here are the best things I’ve discovered, learned, read, wrote, made, and accomplished in 2012. There’s no particular order and not everything on the list was conceived this year, even if they were a part of my life this year. Inspired by Fogus. Continue reading
AUTHOR ARCHIVES :
Epiphanies I had while teaching myself to code
It’s been about a year since I decided to teach myself to code. At the time, I had a bachelor’s degree in English, a job in retail, and zero knowledge about programming. I’d had minute brushes with coding in the past but hadn’t even thought about math or coding since high school.
The impetus for learning to code came from my growing addiction to Hacker News. I, too, wanted to build cool things and understand how web apps and programs worked. I wanted to have an app in the App Store, dammit. I wanted to start a business.
But, for someone who couldn’t tell JavaScript from Common Lisp, I had no idea where to start. Continue reading
10 Tools, Tips, and Tricks to Hack Your Workflow
I spend a lot of time on the Internet, reading articles, following startups, and collecting tools. Most things I find don’t stick, for generally one of three reasons: it sucks, it’s cool but not something I need, it’s cool but I don’t need it right now. But, on rare occasion, an app, website, or workflow will actually make its way into my tool chest. Over time, I’ve built a collection of tools, tips, and tricks that make my life a little bit better.
Getting busy and being social for the socially awkward
A few years ago I found myself out of a long-term relationship and suddenly had nothing but free time. As a homebody, both in and out of relationships, this was fantastic. I’d take the long way home after work, pop in a movie, and relax. I steadily worked my way through my Netflix queue. I didn’t feel rushed, had no real obligations outside of work, and set all my own rules. It was glorious.
Soon, however, I began craving social interaction, with some caveats. I did not want to be busy every night of the week; I was enjoying my time to myself way too much. I had no interest in loud bars or clubs, paying for uninteresting movies because I was invited, or staying out until all hours of the night. Whenever I’d ask someone what was going on, it usually tended to fall into one of these categories. Continue reading
Move Your Brain Online, Get A Bigger Hard Drive
I had a problem. I would constantly find an interesting or helpful article/website/bit of information but never had any good place to store it. I’d tried bookmarks, social bookmarking sites, Evernote, and every other tool that would pop onto my radar. While many of these tools are great, and work well for a large number of people, none of them ever worked for me.
Snippets of websites, tags, text recognition, all lacked one vital element for my needs: a greater sense of context. I didn’t want to just save a website; I wanted to put that website into a larger context. It needed to fit into a comfortable nook within my existent knowledge. It needed to be a flexible and robust encyclopedia for my brain.
That’s when it clicked. I needed my own personal Wikipedia.