Here is a must watch interview with Seth Godin.
Tag: philosophy
Drop of water
A drop of water struggles so hard to return to the ocean. The ocean welcomes it
back with open arms. That is not the time for the ocean, with all of its magnitude
and unlimited beauty and kindness, to remind the drop that it came from the ocean,
left up into the atmosphere, and to came the Earth to serve it, and it is natural for it to
eventually come home, and that the ocean was waiting the whole time.
The story
The creativity that you apply and capture to assemble your system… this is where
all of the fun stuff is. Let me elaborate, everything in your artifacts are
valuable because they tell the story. Actually, they tell the story about a
story, a story that has yet to occur and also a story that has previously
occurred. It is here, where the actions lives, that all of those things are
learned, practiced, suffered accordingly from, and reveled in! In other words,
it is yet another story, a fun one.
If you haven’t noticed by now, either by hearing rumors, reading accounts, or
learning of it yourself: human beings are story-oriented. Your ability to
successfully function in and contribute to society will be directly proportional
to your ability to listen to stories, tell others’ stories, live your life such
that you have new stories to tell, and capture them in some form of persistent
storage. Stories grant us the power to learn from others wisdom that was
painfully acquired thousands of years ago, and it gives you a chance to
contribute the results of your hard work, for the future of humanity, too. A
belief system about the value of story-telling is essential, critical, and
mandatory to successfully achieve your goals with literate programming.
As I change, the story will change, and the action will change. The cycle will
never end.
Nevertheless, I will attempt to do my best here with the good part of me being
a flawless, rational, and logical human being to:
- Deliver a supportable system
- Deliver an adaptable system
- Deliver an expandable system
The perennial fear revealed by a rules engine
When seeking to attain mastery of rules engines (RE), you will experience an odd phenomenon. Others, upon hearing some details of your course of study, will react in a what initially appears to be a manner angrily dismissive of the topic itself. This is strange given the fundamental role that computation plays in literally everything we do, from a manifest perspective, with hardware computers, organic computers, and other.
Upon further interaction, and reflection, it quickly becomes apparent what motivates this reaction is fundamentally, the re-experience of a long inaccessible, perennial fear.
Continue reading “The perennial fear revealed by a rules engine”
Emacs peer and consultant teaching
For the past week I’ve been day dreaming about a nice way where Emacs and org-mode users could collaborate in real time, share their configurations, learn from, and teach each other about their workflow. Sure the Internet is a great resource to pull from, it is also nice to interact with people, too!
Imaginations included weekly “Team Emacs” meetings where folks may present on interesting topics, live online. Code reviews may also be performed, even sharing how to implement a desired feature would be great. The real effort would be to organize “Team Emacs”, and do all of the logistical work. There is of course plenty of work to do for the presenters. What about the attendees? Surely, the work load may be distributed. That said, there is something in the collective consciousness right now. Sacha just posted on one step forward; Bastien!
Bastien is a delightful person online and an excellent leader. Starting an Emacs consultancy is a wonderful idea. The value of your time is priceless, so reflect that in your offering :).
Brutal honesty contains mostly brutality and little honesty
A popular American phrase is that someone is going to be “brutally honest” in their interaction with you. It is a code-word that means they are about to be cruel and hurtful, and mask it under the guise of doing so for you best interest. When you hear this phrases uttered, maybe just leave, and leave the brutality behind with its owner.
Distinguishing Models
It is important to distinguish between the mathematical numbers, the Scheme objects that attempt to model them, the machine representations used to implement the numbers, and notations used to write numbers.
– R6RS Chapter 3
First be, then do
Try first learning how to be happy, becoming happy, and then taking action towards a goal.
How you feel will remain consistent regardless of the outcome. It will change everything about how to pursue the goal; a “means justify the ends” sort of thing.
Freedom from the slavery of our own expectations is the ultimate freedom
Action guides your reaction
When you don’t like how you react to things in life, you can address it by focusing 100% upon how you act yourself. Reaction is really re-acting your previous actions.
Your actions will determine how you react.
Does not apply to life-threatening situations, mostly, though.
What it means to "pay attention"
When you learn to value your own time, you will learn to value other people’s time.
You may even put a dollar amount on the value of your time (though you are likely to choose too small of a number).
The reason that we use the expression “paying attention to N” is that out of respect for ourselves, and others, we give 100% focus to what we are doing.
To do anything else would be something akin to “throwing away money”.