How can I keep learning on my 1.5 hr commute? • Hacker News Board

Re: How can I keep learning on my 1.5 hr commute?

#21

Post by CWuestefeld » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 1:15 PM UTC

dantheman wrote: post #14

I've found these to be pretty good: Mises @ itunes u (austrian economics) http://itunesu.mises.org/ The teaching company: http://www.teach12.com/teach12.aspx?ai=16281

+1 for The Teaching Company. I've spent many hours sitting in traffic while learning about music, linguistics, economics, philosophy, any many other topics. These are recordings of lectures for college-level courses, purpose-made for canned consumption.

Also consider regular audiobooks. I have a subscription to Audible.com (site is lame, product is good). These aren't limited to the latest thriller novel: there are plenty of good non-fiction books available.

Re: How can I keep learning on my 1.5 hr commute?

#22

Post by m_eiman » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 1:16 PM UTC

Public transport + 3g + laptop. Use an hour each way for work and cut down on the time in the office - more free time in the evening or morning.

Re: How can I keep learning on my 1.5 hr commute?

#23

Post by tommorris » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 1:19 PM UTC

I've found that decent programming podcasts are few and far between. The ones that promise to be most useful - as in, actually teaching you how to do X - suffer from the flaw that they are people talking about code. And, obviously, if you are driving or running or whatever it is you are doing such that you are listening to audio podcasts, you can't see the code. If they get into any level of detail, it all falls down.

Imagine: "well, the code is like this - open brackets defn whatever open brackets map open brackets list open brackets whatever clsoed bracket closed bracket" (for Lisp) or "well, we created a class with a method called foo that iterates through the 'bar' argument, and returns a array of strings" (for Python/Java etc.)

I tried listening to a podcast like that (about Python IIRC) when I was on the Eurostar train once. I did have my computer with me, but I just couldn't follow it without being able to see the code. At the point I realised this, I was deep under the English Channel, so couldn't exactly log on to the blog and see the code samples...

The closest things I've found are either things like RailsEnvy - now reborn as The Ruby Show and not IMHO as good - which provided some useful news each week about new libraries and plugins for Rails. Or there's some higher level best practices, software engineering type programmes which often seem to be people preaching to me about how I need to be more and more test-infected and agile and (insert methodology buzzword of the week).

It's actually quite difficult to find good, geeky/programming-related podcasts that don't either just descend into general news chit-chat or end up with someone trying to sell me a new engineering methodology. It's a very hard balance between being too technical for audio-only and not being technical enough. A lot of the newsy podcasts like TWiT are way too damn long and rambly.

I mostly don't bother with tech podcasts for the reasons I've just described and stick to things like In Our Time, and quite a few course podcasts on philosophy and other interesting stuff - quite a lot of universities are now doing podcasts: Oxford, UC Berkeley, MIT, Stanford etc. There are thousands of people now following along with lecture courses remotely using podcasts - see http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-podclass24nov24,0,7889...

Re: How can I keep learning on my 1.5 hr commute?

#24

Post by dwodk » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 1:24 PM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #17

stefanobernardi wrote: post #16

Audiobooks dude. Just buy yourself a few and you'll never go back. It's just learning without the hassle of staying seated and having books in your hand. While I was commuting I listened to so many that literally changed my life. My favorite being Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazi (You can also download a few mixergy interviews).

Yes. Very yes. Very, very yes. I use audible.com. Started with a gold account, and jumped right to platinum. Been using it for more than a year, and I've been incredibly happy. The only complaint is that the site sometimes feels slow. But I'm not on it often. Usually just once a month to get my new books, though I've been buying books as well recently to fill in gaps. Couple audiobooks with podcasts and you'll do fin…

It should be noted that Audible's content is under DRM.

Re: How can I keep learning on my 1.5 hr commute?

#25

Post by ganley » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 1:24 PM UTC

This is going to seem like both a troll and off-topic - sorry about that - but I've never understood, why do people tolerate a commute like that? Especially a driving commute (as opposed to public transport, where at least you could read or something).

Re: How can I keep learning on my 1.5 hr commute?

#26

Post by sad » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 1:31 PM UTC

ganley wrote: post #25

This is going to seem like both a troll and off-topic - sorry about that - but I've never understood, why do people tolerate a commute like that? Especially a driving commute (as opposed to public transport, where at least you could read or something).

Many reasons come to mind, such as not wanting to live in the area you work (maybe you have kids the schools are bad, or the neighborhood isn't real good). It could be that living close to a family member is more important than living close to where you work, like maybe your wife is taking care of her mother or grand mother while you are out working (or the other way around).

There are lots of good reasons. These days you just might be stuck in a mortgage because the value of your house has fallen below what you owe. Given the current "economic climate" it's very easy to have gone from a 70% LTV to 110% LTV.

Re: How can I keep learning on my 1.5 hr commute?

#27

Post by adamilardi » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 1:33 PM UTC

Take the train! and stare out the window. The time spent on self reflection will be more valuable than the random facts you can pick up when you're dead tired and going to work

Re: How can I keep learning on my 1.5 hr commute?

#28

Post by jsvaughan » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 1:34 PM UTC

ganley wrote: post #25

This is going to seem like both a troll and off-topic - sorry about that - but I've never understood, why do people tolerate a commute like that? Especially a driving commute (as opposed to public transport, where at least you could read or something).

And the damage to the environment (but yeah, I understand that sometimes you really have no option)

Re: How can I keep learning on my 1.5 hr commute?

#29

Post by metaprinter » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 1:37 PM UTC

ganley wrote: post #25

This is going to seem like both a troll and off-topic - sorry about that - but I've never understood, why do people tolerate a commute like that? Especially a driving commute (as opposed to public transport, where at least you could read or something).

If you must know, the commute involves going out of my way to pick up kids on the way home. If the gig goes Long Term I am definitely moving closer.

Re: How can I keep learning on my 1.5 hr commute?

#30

Post by jasonlotito » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 1:46 PM UTC

dwodk wrote: post #24

jasonlotito wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Very yes. Very, very yes. I use audible.com. Started with a gold account, and jumped right to platinum. Been using it for more than a year, and I've been incredibly happy. The only complaint is that the site sometimes feels slow. But I'm not on it often. Usually just once a month to get my new books, though I've been buying books as well recently to fill in gaps. Couple audiobooks with podcasts and you'll do fin…

It should be noted that Audible's content is under DRM.

Yes, it is.

I had a problem one time, as I'd authorized my iPod one too many times on many different computers, and forgot to deauthorize the iPod on them. I contact Audible and they reset the authorizations back to 5 without a problem. At the same time, they also let me download the audiobooks again if I want, even if they get a new, higher quality version in.

I look at Audible as Steam for books. Steam is DRM I'm willing to accept. So is Audible.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not dismissing your comment. It's a valid and reasonable point.

I should also point out that the cost of books through Audibles subscriptions are massively lower than if I bought them from a retailer. The cost is significantly lower that the DRM doesn't feel unreasonable.