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May Update - Design for Hackers - Meet.js - ReadingClub



My plans from last month went all wrong... I've done much less that I planned and at the same time I have read 4 really long books that I got for birthday (sum about 2600 pages) so I've spend two entire weeks on them. But let's review some books:

Design for Hackers by David Kadavy
This is really good book! I can strongly recommend it. I'm not really any graphic designer, or really into drawing but nonetheless book was fun. For me it was great to get general ideas about graphics and design. Some rules are really, really old and I sill remember some of them from my primary school, it was great refresher! If you want to know more about design just read it :)


Lean Startup by Eric Ries 
Book is good but next to me in the office sits guy that talks about ideas from this book all the time so it wasn't really "new" and revolutionary for me. Many times I get frustrated by slow pace of book (because I know it), but it is easy to understand it. For many people this ideas are new, really new, so it should be elaborate in explanations. To sum up: book is really good but if a fan of this book throws at you ideas all the time then probably there is no need in reading it.

Make: Electronics. Learning Through Discovery By Charles Platt (4th chapter)
I got stack - probably because of my slow pace of reading it. Made some Really Stupid mistakes and right now I have no free time after work to really sit and try to keep up :(

Hint: if you order any electronics parts and you get it pinned to some foam don't throw it away!!!! This foam is conductive and protects your chip or whatever from static electricity! image from: snapguide.com 
Let me know if I translated it correctly because I have read it in polish and I think it means "conductive foam"


Interactive 3D Graphics (lesson 7-10) with final exam
I have moved to 10 lesson but give up on it a little. Videos are too fast for me (they recommend using VLC and watch them offline with 0.8 of original speed). I am super angry on myself because I just don't get it... I'm skipping exercises since at least 7 lesson to at least get rough idea about this whole 3D thing. From 5-10 it's impossible for me to keep up with only videos. I'm planning to buy a book about 3D and try read it and to this 3D course when I will know more. 


Electronics & WebGL meets real life: I'm trying to finish at least one of them to move (something like kanban for books). This is really hard because both of them are depending on my free time in front of PC. I'm thinking of some kind distinction between what I do and is really time consuming and have only one such thing in month and books that I can read in tram and I have 2x30mins a day.


Meet.js

Event is happening 11 of June! https://www.facebook.com/events/462123980547354/?fref=ts in SmartRecruiters office. Everyone is invited and we still are looking for speakers!

Write:
Nothing interesting here, even on hackday at STP we've done something more practical than games which I wanted to start writing. Maybe js13k will be an good excuse to focus only on that?


Some of above went badly because of:


Pan Lodowego Ogrodu #1 by Jarosław Grzędowicz
Pan Lodowego Ogrodu #2
Pan Lodowego Ogrodu #3
Pan Lodowego Ogrodu #4 : sum() ~ 2600 ;) 

Can be translated into something like: The Master of Ice Garden, let me know if you know official or at least better translation. I have read 4 really good and long science fantasy books. Take me two weeks I think but it was something I couldn't resist ;) 
I can strongly recommend this book. If you know The Witcher then you should like it as well :)



The Theory of Fun by Raph Coster 
Book about games, game design, what is fun. Unfortunately not something I thought it would be. There were some good informations about chunking, and how our brain likes it. Mention of Flow was really good and I know it from programming. Book is short and good but half of it was more for a full time gamedesigner than for me. Despite that, really good book with many new word for me :)

 




Earth Unaware (The First Formic War)  by Orson Scott Card (Author), Aaron Johnston
W Przedeniu by Orson Scott Card & Aaron Johnston
Above image is for polish edition (I like it more than original one).
Book is not as good as Ender's Game but sill fun to read. This is only first book but I'm a fan of Ender so I'm biased.


Boy from Poland (Chłopiec z Polski) by Orson Scott Card
Short story for a Polish fans of Ender. Short but fun :)



Introduction to Japanese on Memrise (first round done, still many refreshers) 
Really good introduction to Japanese. Some Hiragana and basic words + really good memrise system for learning. As of now I need to keep up because I have 133 things "to water.
Hint: for chrome you can use Google Input extension to write hiragana.

Beer&Books ReadingClub

I have created new group and event on meetup to move internal STP reading club monthly meeting from office to bar so that we can stay longer and dring some beer while talking. 
While doing that I realized that there is no benefit in keeping it 'private' so that event is public and everyone can attend to talk or just to hear what we think about those books.

What is ReadingClub? It started just as an idea to make public plans for a month and after that talk about books and share real reviews among participants. It started as internal thing is STP(schibsted.pl) but it was never really something confidential. As you see above it worked pretty good for me. I even too much couse I read really a lot in my own opinion. 


Plans for June:


  1. Interactive 3D Rendering (at least to finish and expand my knowledge). Just move it from doing to done!
  2. Make Electronics: same thing. Finish it.
After two of above finished:
  1. SICP: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs really hard book about Computer Science with code examples in Scheme. Challenging and I really want to read it. 
  2. Memrise: English - Start any course on english. While reading the theory of fun I got scared how many words were new to me. I know that my grammar could be better but not knowing words means not understanding. 
Continue:
  1. Practice: Introduction to Japanese
  2. Practice: Guitar (I try to learn how to play on guitar...)
  3. At least once a week: Dance lesson
  4. At least once a week: Martial Arts training (Krav-Maga, or Muay-Thai)
Habit:
  1. HabitForge: Train every day.
  2. + my standard list of daily tasks.

Right now I'm really into reading more about Flow, Focus and Concentration but obviously I don't get it! ;-) at least yet :)



To sum up: 8 books in 1 month. Unfortunately most of it is fantasy and I can read it really fast.

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