March 6, 2008
I just figured this out from YouTube and made my very first video by using my macbook’s built-in webcam and the iMovie HD software that comes with Mac OS X. No worries, I’m not a Mac fanboy, that’s just what I happen to have.
Fast Version:
Slow Version:
Download (right click with mouse & choose ’save as’): fast | slow
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February 25, 2008
Have you ever taken a 3 hour exam and noticed a few people leaving a good 60 minutes before anyone else has even finished? Perhaps later you find out that one or two of these early finishers actually got high marks on their exams. Maybe you even discover that one of them got the highest overall marks in the class.
So you are left thinking that this person must be freakishly smart. Ironically, the early finisher is often thinking the opposite: “.. people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent. ” - Paul Graham
If you went and talked to most of these early finishers, they would be hard pressed to tell you why or how they manage to do so well and do it fast. As it happens, in-between procrastination at high school and university, I occasionally pulled off the feat of finishing an exam way ahead of everyone while still getting 90% or better on the exam. I also knew a few early finishers in university, and I talked to them about how they did it, using my personal experience to corroborate what the “trick” is.
Ultimately, it boils down to speed. The trick is to push yourself to answer problems as fast as you can. Also, you want to get instant feedback on each problem and find out if you got it right or wrong.
For example, when doing a math problem out of the textbook, do the ones that have an answer in the back of the book. Do it as fast as you can, then look it up at the back, and if you got it wrong, figure out why and then move on. It can feel uncomfortable when you are going so fast, because it feels like you are out of control and that you might miss a crucial step. That is a normal feeling and perfectly acceptable.
I have observed that the bulk of students, including many slow but straight A students try to consciously solve the math problems. They go at it slow enough to understand the problem at a conscious level, and rigidly follow all the steps. As a result, they take ages to solve one math problem. There is no particular benefit to doing it this way, you aren’t going to be right more often, but you will feel more in control.
Going fast works, but why does it?
Well, I think it is because our pre-frontal cerebral cortex (where the frontal lobes are) is the most recently evolved part of the human brain. This is primarily where our consciousness is located, and it is only taking up a fraction of our brain. What about the rest of our brain? It has been around a heck of lot longer evolutionarily speaking, and it has survived millions of years to get to where it is now. Where do you think your instincts or gut feelings come from?
The rest of your brain that is not “you” (your consciousness), has a lot more computational resources and is a lot smarter than your consciousness can be. That is how it can detect things “you” didn’t notice, and report this as instincts to your consciousness. Check out dirtsimple.org’s Multiple Self article for a similar explanation about how you are not your consciousness.
Now that you know that your conscious part of your brain isn’t that smart, and that you have a lot more resources in your reach, how can you access that? Well, that is the tricky and uncomfortable part. Ultimately, it is about going faster than your consciousness can handle, and trusting in the rest of your brain. It requires a fair amount of faith, but the results will astonish you if you can take the leap.
Note: This applies to all technical & memorization-heavy subjects.
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February 12, 2008
After reading about the Uberman’s sleep schedule awhile ago, I began asking myself what sort of university education would the Uberman go for? What kind of degree path would he follow?
Well, the Uberman would probably aim for several things at once. Firstly, he would aim for solid fundamentals. For example, Math and English would be excellent fundamentals, and a quite a few people go for dual degrees in that. However, there is also Physics and Philosophy which Ayn Rand, one of the female ubermensch, highly recommends. Fortunately, Physics and Philosophy encompass enough of Math and English respectively.
The Uberman would also go for the holy trinity of professional degrees: Engineer, Lawyer, and Medical Doctor. He would also try to study some of the key technologies of the future. He would try to study Genetic manipulation, Molecular Nanotechnology, Space technologies (Rockets/Colonization/Mining/Robotics), and AI technologies like Evolutionary Computation (Evolutation for short). Additionally, he would go to the best universities in the world.
What would the end result be? Perhaps it would look something like this:
Dual Bachelor degrees in Engineering Physics (w/ concentration in Nanotechnology) & Philosophy.
Dual Masters degrees in: M.B.A & J.D (Law)
Dual Doctorate degrees in: M.D & Ph.D in Genetics/Biochemistry
Most universities support dual degrees in M.B.A & J.D, and also M.D & Ph.D. The M.B.A is a bit of a bonus, however, it can be considered the fourth professional degree.
For the first set of dual degrees, due to the Engineering and Physics, MIT is probably the best university to go to. For the Masters and Doctorate degree selections, Harvard is at the top in both. However, the Uberman would probably want to vary the universities, and perhaps go to Cambridge for either the Masters or Doctorate degree selections.
Unfortunately, there is a problem with MIT, it appears to lack the exact choice of the Bachelor degrees unlike some Canadian Universities such as: University of Alberta: Engineering Physics (Nanoengineering Option) .
It should be noted that I failed to fit in the AI and Space technologies into the Uberman’s study plan. I have no ideas how to do so.
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February 10, 2008
I am an avid chatter. I regularly chat with people via IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and via the instant messaging services such as MSN (Microsoft), AIM (AOL), YIM (Yahoo), ICQ, and GTalk (Google). My current setup is to use the IRC client Irssi, and to access Bitlbee from the IRC client. Bitlbee provides me access to all those instant messaging services.
That means I have one single client program that I use to talk to people across many different services and platforms. But more importantly than that, all logs of the chats are consolidated in one place. This has proven to be a major boon for me. For the longest time, I never really saw the point of logging everything, and I always felt that it was an invasion of privacy when other people did it. However, when I started using Irssi, one day I activated its auto-logging functionality with the command “/set autolog on”. Such a simple command, so I thought I would give it a try.
Soon, I discovered that I no longer needed to write down details or bookmark URLs that came to me via the chats. I could let the logs remember all the details for me. All I needed to remember is roughly who told me or a keyword that would be near the detail of interest. All I have to do is go to the logs and run a search program on them, and that way find information that someone might have told me months or years ago. I’ll even go hunting for phrases and quotes or statements that I think are relevant to a conversation at hand. Sometimes someone will ask a question that I will be able to answer by searching my logs, even though it was part of a conversation that I was not involved with, due to the nature of the IRC channel.
By offloading my memory into a central place, I no longer need to worry about retaining important information that came to me via my chats. It is literally an external memory device for my brain. This is the next step in our evolution, and in fact, a free online science fiction novel Accelerando explores the possibility of external memory devices and search processes.
I think sooner or later we will log all our interactions with the computer, and that will extend our capabilities. How many times have you tried to remember which website you visited but failed to bookmark? There is a variety of information coming to us through multiple programs on the computer. If there was a way to log all of that information, a way to log everything that passes our eyes, then it becomes trivial to relocate that particular bit of information that you saw once a year ago, something that had an impact or gave you an idea. Imagine being able to recover that teeny but influential bit of information quickly and easily instead of being resigned to never finding it again. It would be a tremendous boost to our creativity and intelligence.
Let the logging begin.
Sidenote:
For those that are curious about my choice of Irssi, which is not a graphical irc program, this is due to the fact that I run it in a shell account on another server. I run it inside Screen which lets me connect and detach from the shell without having to close Irssi. That means I can connect to Irssi from any computer with internet access. I like the flexibility of being in a shell account, especially since it means I’m only a few key presses away from searching my logs with Grep, a powerful command line utility for searching.
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February 9, 2008
CulturedCode has put out a preview version of their new Things application, which is designed for people that are following GTD (Getting Things Done). GTD is a workflow system that focuses on emptying our head of ideas, goals, headaches, and putting them all into a trusted system. Things appears to be the best GTD application for Mac OS X currently.
Other alternatives are iGTD2, OmniFocus, and Midnight Inbox. However, Things seems to have achieved a simplicity and user-friendliness that invites one to actually start doing GTD. It is definitely not as powerful as OmniFocus or Inbox, but it is less rigid and easier to adapt to your work flow.
Here is my tags list so far. I am also experimenting with collecting non-todos, such as ideas, into Things and just sticking them in the Someday section. That is what the very last tag section is for.
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February 9, 2008
Calgary Alternative Transportation Co-op is a great alternative for those that don’t wish to own a vehicle but occasionally need a car for some activities. As of right now, the up-front costs are the $25 membership fee, $48 annual maintenance fee, and a $500 damage deposit (refunded when you stop carsharing).
Usage fees are approximately $4/hour & $0.20/km, but only the first 8 hours in a day are charged, also from midnight to 6am there is no hourly charge. Some cars are more expensive as well, and naturally you pay for the gas you use.
In a hypothetical scenario if you reserved the car for an entire day, you could drive to Edmonton and back, and assuming 300 km at $0.20 for $60 and 8 hours at $4/hour for $32, it would cost $92.
How does this compare to a regular rental? National Car charges $24.92 for a full day of use, with unlimited kilometers, plus $27.95 for full loss damage waiver and personal accident insurance (which is optional, and there are cheaper options), and some miscellaneous fees of $18.25, bringing the whole cost to $71.12.
So for any sort of serious driving, the carsharing program clearly isn’t the best rate. However, for short inter-city driving of only a few hours a day, it would definitely be cheaper due to the lower up front costs for that day.
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February 8, 2008
Coworking seems to be the neatest thing since sliced bread, at least for people that are able to do their work from anywhere, given a computer and a phone. Since there are more and more people working from home, freelancing or telecommuting, there is increased demand for places where they can go and work and see others doing the same thing. They want to escape the loneliness of working at home and from the distraction of having no constraints.
There are places popping up all over north america and beyond. Vancouver has Workspace, San Francisco has hat factory, Seattle has office nomads. These are just a few that caught my eye, and believe you me, there are many more, which you can check for at the coworking wiki.
Anyways, I checked the coworking wiki for a Calgary coworking spot, and I noticed that there appear to be up to 5 people interested. I know of 2-3 people personally that would likely be interested in coworking as well. My idea is to setup a meetup.com coworking group for calgary. That way we can achieve critical mass, get enough interested people that we can rent an office space and do that co-operatively, with very little business risk.
Meetup.com is a great way to grow a group quickly. For example, the Calgary Poker meetup group was formed in September, 2007, just 6 months ago. Already it has 144 members and has had 5 poker tournaments so far. I’ve been to one of the tournaments and it was a blast.
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February 8, 2008
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a means for people to get together and socialize. Anyone can form a channel as long as it does not exist. For example if someone joins the channel #monkey and there is nobody there, typically they gain operator status in that channel. Operator status gives them the ability to control who is allowed in the channel, who can speak, what the channel title says, and a variety of other things. They can also give other people in the channel operator status.
One of the important roles of the channel operator is to remove disruptive influences on the channel. He does this by kicking the person from the channel, which can be used as a warning, and if necessary, add a ban preventing the person from joining the channel again.
In smaller channels, generally the operator gives maximum benefit of doubt because other people in the channel may disagree with his actions, and the general ill-will that results from such a negative action can be more disruptive than the person actually was. In larger channels of 100+ regulars, kickbanning can be more common and less reason is necessary.
Often, people visit a favorite channel at all times of the day and become well known to each other. When someone gets kickbanned, it is often a big deal to them. Often there is a reason for the kickban, perhaps it was even a misunderstanding, or perhaps the channel operator did not feel very tolerant. Perhaps the victim of the kickban was presenting a contrary view that most people violently disagreed with.
The aftermath of the kickban can determine whether or not the person is allowed to join the channel again. Quite a few people will react extremely negatively to the kickban, going so far as to insult the channel operators, messaging everyone else in the channel and trying to instigate a mutiny perhaps. Such mutinies are rarely successful, and the negative reaction of the person has merely dug a deeper hole and lessened their chances of ever being allowed back in the channel again.
However, there are other people that refuse to overreact. They will calmly apologize or if they don’t think an apology is necessary, politely ask to be allowed back in. Perhaps if absolutely necessary, they will try again another day. These people pass the test. The reaction to the kickban is very much a test. Those that overreact fail, and reinforce that the channel operator chose the correct action. Those that do not overreact make it hard for the channel operator to justify his actions to himself and to the members of the channel.
Lesson: Be smart, learn not to overreact.
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February 5, 2008
It seems to me that most people are pessimists. When they are presented with any kind of contrarian idea, they tend to focus on the negative aspects first and foremost. They will even go so far as to pretend that they are realists.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t jive. To be a realist means that you are in touch with reality, that you have the capacity to reason about reality, and that ultimately means you are rational. Is pessimism rational? Is pessimism a source of progress? Absolutely not.
It is a given that progress is rational and that non-progress is not. Optimism drives people past the edge of knowledge and certainty into unknown territory. This is where progress is made. Optimism drives progress, and optimism is rational.
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January 17, 2008
Last summer I suddenly developed a huge interest in sailboats. Mainly, the notion of living aboard a sailboat and being able to sail around the world is very compelling. Imagine being able to take your house with you on your travels. Also, living on a sailboat can be quite a bit cheaper than living on land, especially if you travel instead of paying mooring fees.
Some nice urls:
Living Aboard
The £200 Millionaire
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