I started the year happy in my opinion that "it's ok to be crap at your hobby if you find the process enjoyable". I made some really rubbish things and enjoyed the process.
Then I learned that I feel fine with being rubbish at metalwork, but that I actually want to get better at woodwork. Now I am enjoying the process of failing, learning and improving.
The Spectrum (and ZX81) had a big effect on a whole generation of Brits. I know my folks could not have afforded a C64 or BBC Micro but they did manage fifty quid in Currys to start my lifetime of coding.
I feel your pain as I pay about the same for 1.1mbps down. I can't get any faster speeds (I checked when I worked for Internode) and speed drops whenever it rains.
I once tried to follow the Udacity course on Tensorflow, but could not download a 10GB that was needed for one of the exercises. Download kept failing and restarting and eventually I killed it after 8 days. Utterly shameful.
I generally wake up when 5 kilos of fur jumps on my bladder and shouts "MEOW!"
However, in my life before cats I really struggled to wake up for a 9-to-5 until I got an alarm with a lamp that lights up very gradually, simulating sunrise. I was surprised at how well it worked and definitely recommend them.
I had a Bio-Brite model, which I don't think are made nowadays but google for "alarm clock lamp sunrise" and there are lots of alternatives.
Does anybody have experience with Red Hat's OpenShift PaaS? [0]
Reading through the sales copy, it seems to be a reasonable competitor to Heroku. They offer 3 small gears free and have a startup assistance program for those that qualify.
Discover weekly is the reason that I pay for Spotify. I'm an old guy that prefers vinyl to mp3s, misses the local record store terribly and hates radio, so modern music distribution sucks for me.
I first tried Spotify many years ago, back when playlists were quite new. At the time, I was living in the UK and a big user of last.fm but, out of curiosity, I spent an afternoon building one playlist out of the few tracks they had that I liked.
I was/am into house and techno but the tracks were not yet available on Spotify back then - but the originals which were heavily sampled sure were. So I ended up with a playlist of funk, disco, blues, hip-hop and jazz that was kinda familiar, lotta fun.
Fast-forward several years and I'm living in Australia, where last.fm is a paid service that had stagnated, so back to check out Spotify again...
It had millions more tracks.
It had learned from my playlist. Discover weekly is soooo good.
It had my attention and my credit card.
To the parent poster, I suggest you treat Spotify like a friendly muso willing to lend you her near infinite collection. I've you've ever wondered about $GENRE, go and play. I have no relationship with Spotify except as a very happy customer.
Agreed. My partner is a Wine Educator and this is one of her favorite rants. Consider the costs of getting wine onto a store shelf:
- Glass bottle
- Bottling & Labelling
- Transport
- Cork/closure
- Taxes (29% here in Aus)
- Retail Markup - 25-50%
- Promotions, payment processing, business overhead, etc.
An eight dollar bottle of wine does not leave a lot of money for grape growing, harvest, wine making, aging etc, all the good stuff that makes wine tasty. Probably under one dollar.
Some grape varieties cost a lot more than others, e.g. Pinot Noir is expensive to grow and harvest because it has thin skins and so is easily damaged. However, any recent vintage bottle that retails for more than $100 is about meeting a market price point, not production costs.
We're almost 100% Atlassian at my $WORK (as OP's original list but Jenkins for CI/CD). For my side projects, I don't need anywhere near as much team communication, so free services work for me:
- Version Control (Bitbucket)
- Issue Tracking (Trello)
- Team Chat (Slack)
- Wiki (None, but I'd love to hear recommendations for free, private wikis)
When I was working in the UK, I negotiated to change an IP clause from "during the period of employment" to "during the course of employment" for precisely the reason that you state.
My kid is still very young and still learning the very basics of reading/writing/arithmetic. So we reinforce/practice those at home. I've found that his motivation is higher when the stuff he learns at home matches the things he learning at school.
We also do a bunch of weekend activities with an educational aspect - from external events like Maker Fair and Science Expos, to taking apart the lawn mower to learn about engines.
We also have this fun ritual at bedtime where he can ask any question about anything and get a serious answer. Of course this is used to delay lights-out but it's one of the most valuable learning exercises (for parents too). At this age, almost everything can be made educational but the trick is to keep it fun.
High-end real estate agents are a possible source of custom. Similarly, commercial property developers would benefit if they can add augmentations to your VR environments (move a wall, add lighting etc).
A former employer tested out a number of residential Ethernet over power devices.
The results were mixed - they either work really well, or really badly. It seems that the home's wiring and appliances have an overwhelming effect on their efficacy. So, the recommendation is try before you buy if at all possible.