Many congrats for the excellent work with Redis
Side projects
171–180 of 243 posts
Re: Side projects
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> It helps me to avoid recipes and instead come up with ideas based on my tastes and the things I have available. I've been trying to learn how to cook ever since I moved roughly 3 months ago. My early attempts at replicating others' recipes had paid off decently so I attempted the hack-stuff-together approach on a couple of occasions. It did _not_ go well. :-/ I ended up with a ton of wasted ingredients not to ment…
3 months isn't a long time. I think one way to build up intuition is to cook a recipe with a very short list of ingredients multiple times, with small variations (like the size of cutting things up or cooking time or whatever). One thing Good Eats consistently does is talk about whether an ingredient has a functional purpose in a recipe, and what that purpose is. Other cooking resources do that too, but usually not a…
This right here is exactly right. If the reasoning is mentioned at all, it's usually incidental and not intentional. When we talk about salt in the seasoning step of our pan-sautéed chicken lesson, we wrote: "Salt "brings out the flavor" in chicken by reducing our perception of bitterness in foods. This, in turn, leads to an increased perception of sweet, sour, and umami (savory) flavors."
This is obviously a rather trivial example, but hopefully you see how generalizing this (and similar nuggets of information) can help.
Re: Side projects
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, you were right in the above comment that that ability does come from having some experience. But the "let's see what's in the fridge" game is a great way to get that experience! You'll undoubtedly mess a few things up, but that's just the process of learning.
It's weird... the more I think about it, the more I ask myself - "it's just like programming, another cool skill to master - why I'm so afraid of experimenting?"...
If I could upvote this a thousand times, I would. The problem, however, is that making a mistake in programming is not so painful. Making a mistake in cooking costs money and is often pretty embarrassing. I can easily see why you'd be more afraid of experimenting here.
Re: Side projects
#174I'm working on a side project now that will eventually be an open source project. I think it could benefit a lot of people. My problem is that I have a full time job. When I come home at night I want to cook dinner, run, socialize, drink a beer with a friend, or work on an art project. I don't particularly want to configure Ansible or read the OpenVPN docs. At most I can get 3-5 hours of productive work per week on t…
I did the quit and focus thing. It ended up working out, but just barely. I was underwater for a while and my marriage about to fall apart.. I'm not sure I'd recommend the same path even though it did have a happy ending (co-founder of a well funded startup, a cash bonus that wiped out my worst debt, and my wife and I are back on good terms).
Wish I had better advice, but it is a hard problem. If you only have 3-5 hours per week, perhaps you should consider going to meetups instead, and networking outside of your existing communities? You might get more results out of that, or find an opportunity you are willing to leave your current job for.
Re: Side projects
#175My side project is an escape from my real job where process, politics, and domain experts outside of their domain prevent progress...
Re: Side projects
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can completely empathize. I have a family, and so it takes even more effort to create the time and find the space to make things happen. I just launched a game into the App Store. The journey was incredible, and filled with joy, sweat, and tears. I've written about what I've gone through. It might be helpful for you. A small caution... these are relatively long posts, but hopefully they are enjoyable, insightful, a…
Thank you Arjuna! Congratulations on publishing your game. From your linked post: > Even the people around you won't understand the mental suffering that you are silently muscling through; you, torn between two worlds as the aforementioned autonomic function pushes and strains you to your personal limits. You measure the day's progress in centimeters rather than meters. You will either summit, or freeze to death on t…
Thanks!
I understand. From my experience, the most important items here are:
1. Keep the lines of communication open in your relationship. Sometimes, these feelings and lack-of-understanding that she is expressing may be because you are out of sync with her needs (i.e., she may feel like your work is taking precedence over your relationship and her). I know that finding balance is easier said than done, but, I feel the secret may be in:
2. Strive to carve out time to work in the early-morning or late-evening, whichever works best for your relationship. That way, you can attempt to perform a, "separation of concerns", if you will, in your life. This will serve to reduce the impact of your side project on your relationship. You may find that she is more understanding if you have a set schedule of working that is balanced and low-impact on your quality time together. Plus, with a set-schedule, your focus, stress-levels, and output will be better, because you will be working in a more balanced way.
Hope that helps. I know it's tough for creatives like us to find balance, as we work during the day at the mine, then try to create time for our side projects while juggling exercise, relationships, family, etc.
Re: Side projects
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been in this situation for as long as I can think of. But lately I've found something which is working for the time being. I don't use my car to commute to office. It takes 25 minutes via public transport (one way), so I use that time and build all the complex logic/data structure/algos in that time for my hobby project. Cooking doesn't break my mental loop. So I keep thinking & solving things regarding my hobby…
Thanks. Unfortunately public transit is non-existent where I live. I'd love to spend my commute time working on the project rather than hoping that a distracted uninsured driver doesn't smash into me. I do enjoy thinking about the project while cooking. Good luck on your project!
Obviously moving can be a big deal, but IMO you should seriously consider it. You have a problem with available time, and commuting by car is a massive time sink. It's pretty insane how much "human capacity" is wasted this way!
Re: Side projects
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's weird... the more I think about it, the more I ask myself - "it's just like programming, another cool skill to master - why I'm so afraid of experimenting?"...
If I could upvote this a thousand times, I would. The problem, however, is that making a mistake in programming is not so painful. Making a mistake in cooking costs money and is often pretty embarrassing. I can easily see why you'd be more afraid of experimenting here.
Agree strongly RE embarrassing part - for now I just gave up on experimenting while cooking for friends; I tried it once, and they laugh at me ever since. Costs is also a factor, but I notice I'm afraid of experimenting even with small dishes and cheap ingredients the fridge is stocked full of.
I'm starting to realize now that it's just a stupid fear I need to overcome. I'm glad this thread forced me to think more about my attitude towards cooking.
Re: Side projects
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a few services now that deliver a box of ingredients and recipes for $60 or so a week for three meals. Plated, HelloFresh, BlueApron. They really helped us actually cook more, instead of talking about it. It still takes time (30-40 min per meal) but you do learn cooking techniques and you do eat much healthier. And while it seems expensive, we probably go out one less night a week because of it, saving $60…
The pain of going to buy ingredients is a big one for people. I just can't personally see myself spending that on much ingredient delivery, though my wife does get some things delivered from a CSA. I think there are two other pains wrapped up in why people buy from these services: meal planning and instruction. Meal planning is hard and it helps to just treat it like picking from a menu than creating a plan out of th…
The main benefit is that we are cooking new things a lot more often. Three times a week, from scratch. You get pretty good at small dicing onions, I'll tell you that. Before, it was maybe cooking one time a week from a real recipe, plus pizza, pasta, leftovers, restaurants, and take-out.
Re: Side projects
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
"spending money is part of how capitalism builds a society" This is a really important point. I'm currently reading The Rational Optimist ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Rational-Optimist-Prosperity-Evolv... ) which is about technology, innovation, and economic progress throughout history and one of his major points is that economies progress when people become more reliant on one another so they can focus on their speci…
Thanks for the link. I'm putting that one on my list. I like how you said "most valuable". My time isn't any more valuable then someone else's. I'm just most valuable writing code. Someone is else is most valuable cooking. Others are most valuable curing diseases.
A small tangent, but Michael Pollan's "Cooked" makes a reasonable counter-argument.
By delegating everything that we're not "most valuable" at to others, we potentially end up becoming impotent and un-informed, unable to make intelligent decisions outside our area of expertise. Thus we lose our ability to be good citizens.
He specifically makes the point in the context of cooking, something he argues is so fundamental to our survival that it is a skill all humans should have at least some basic ability to do.
Just a thought. :-)
Edit: you can read some of his argument starting on page 20 of the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Cooked-Natural-Transformation-Michael-...
And reviewed here - http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/04/24/michael-pollan-cooke...