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This is must read for all introverts and all who interact with them. In the world so focused on extroversion it's reassuring to hear that introversion is normal and have its own strengths. I'm not exactly shy and introvert person all the time but I learned a lot. In my opinion, everyone can learn something from it. Solitude can be something that not only introverts can benefit from. The most important idea for introverts is to embrace your strengths. Instead of feeling guilty you're not social and cheerful all the time you should use your observational and listening skills. Picking only a couple of close friends over many acquaintances might be better for you as well. Even when everyone around you creates social pressure to talk it doesn't mean that you have to do it. Quiet gives you more confidence in who you are and how you can live your life your own way. It turns out that an introvert can fake extroversion, but it's easier if it's important because...

I wasn't sure who this book is for after reading the description so this post should help you decide if this book is for you. If you never used Node.js or any kind of servers side Node.js then you can learn a lot, but you have to know basics of programming. Most of the technologies will be useful in Web Development as well so I can recommend it to Front-End developer who want to learn more about the Back-Ends. Unfortunately, I expected the book to be harder and more focused on game programming. It was really good to see hard ideas like corrections implemented in simple examples. It was encouraging to see how easy it can be to be implemented regardless of how hard it sounds. If you are interested in more implementation techniques of the game servers and how those ideas you already know might be implemented there then your best companion is the accompanying code. Unlike many programming books, the applications actually work and the code is easy to read. Personally I found the cod...

This is my second audiobook and I have to admit that I really enjoyed listening to it. I've seen the trailer two weeks ago and I had to read the book. It turned out that it's more practical for me to listen to it, but I think it's for the better. So what is the book about? On the first mission to the Mars, one of the astronauts stays behind during evacuation and he has to figure out how to survive. That's it. Most of the book is about him panicking and then having the genius plan how to fix the problem. If you will like the first part about him figuring out what to eat then you will like the whole book. I liked the humour but I think the book is a little too long and in the last chapters you can feel the repetitive scheme of panic and fixing stuff. Good thing it happened almost at the end for me. It's entertaining and I can recommend it as something fun to read. Rating: 8/10

I was curious what this book is about, and what it might be to think like a freak. Unfortunately, I knew most of the stories or they were ordinary. I liked them, but they were not what I expected. The story about Takeru Kobayashi  is the only one about real life freak and how he thinks, this one was great. Most of the ideas were about overcoming cognitive biases and using data to make decisions. Thinking small and having fun are important to keep you motivated. All in all it was my first audiobook - I have enjoyed listening to it - unfortunately it ended too soon - it's really short one. Rating: 6/10

Drawing was on my list of things I want to know how to do for a long time. A year ago I've seen a nice recommendation of this book saying that the science in it is not worth reading, but the exercises are great. I have to admit that I skipped the exercises in last chapters - basically I don't have crayons or pastels and I don't want to buy them right now. Besides that, I have learned a lot. Exercises were really hard for me, even sitting and drawing for an hour was really hard. Fortunately in the end I have set a goal to myself to finish it in June. Without that specific goal, it would probably never happen. After finishing my self-portrait in chapter 10 and comparing it to the one before the book I was amazed. Don't get me wrong, the people on both on them don't resemble me, but the third one at least looks like a person. Most of what I learned about drawing would be something I would consider "cheating". I though that artists just happen to si...

Interesting and motivational book. Covers some basics of elimination to stop wasting time and basics of entrepreneurship. Unfortunately beside caching title there is not much you can use or could not find elsewhere. First I enjoyed the book and it was really good to refresh some rules of elimination. For example, I have closed my gmail tab in Chrome and moved to the desktop mail app with the checks set to every hour. It may not be the best solution, but it's a lot better. Pareto rule (80/20) is one of those I feel inspired by and don't know how to really use.  It is great in theory, but it's much harder to put into practice. Chapters about automation are basically about hiring Virtual Assistant from India and how that person is going to help you. Maybe VA helps him but I don't see how can I use that... Management. It was good to read about selling the product instead of services. Nothing new, but a good reminder and something that might be a good idea. Remo...

I was reading this book in polish, but I think that most of my review is language agnostic as I did not have any problems with the translation. The book has many authors and you can feel it while reading. Some of the chapters could be more interesting, especially the ones that are really abstract and I am still not sure if I have any idea how buffers work. I am really glad that I participated in  3D Rendering with Three.js  course. It really helped at the beginning of the book where I felt that many nonobvious concepts were not explained thoroughly. I have to admit that I have watched a really nice video about WebGL while reading this book, and what struck me was how much similarities are between those (I mean while one is in JavaScript other in C++). All you will learn about OpenGL will be useful in WebGL, at least at some point so I am happy that I took the time to read it. Because of the OpenGL SuperBible I managed to understand most of the talk and it ...

If you want to know how some ordinary companies transformed themselves to great (and big) then this is the book for you. There are seven main ideas in the book, but not all of them were of interest to me. The four that were: Level 5 Leadership First Who, Then What The Stockdale Paradox Hedgehog Concept Level 5 Leadership CEO has to be humble but care deeply about the company. He has to find great people and trust them to do a great job. Charismatic CEO can't help the company, at least, in the long run. He may even leave it more fragile because he will take all the spotlight, fire managers that are too ambitious and is likely to rule with the iron fist. This will work for a short time but when he leaves there is no one to give orders and the company collapses. On the other hand, humble CEO uses best managers he can find, and tries to be as much dispensable as possible. First Who, Then What While hiring you can't make compromises. Every person you hire ha...

This book was recommended to me but after reading the table of contents I was convinced it was useless as it was contradicting itself even in the names of the chapters. Unfortunately from time to time my way of thinking and interacting with people gets me into trouble. I am not alone it this, read: Well, Actually . Of course review of " How to Win Friends and Influence People " helped but I wanted to read more about the interactions with people around me to keep thinking about it. I got back to The 48 Laws of Power not to learn those laws - I don't really believe in them but to gain more knowledge about people. What I appreciate about the book are the stories that the author uses to convince you of his ideas. They are picked and sorted to match the laws so something that worked for one person dooms someone else later, but they are really good stories nonetheless. Unfortunately, I am not sure if there is anything I can use in real life. The advices and laws are rea...

Sometimes what your team need is the clear vision of the project that is the same for everyone in the team. One of the best examples of using vision to drive the time was by Mateusz Kwaśniewski. He used the template from Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore: For [target customer] Who [statement of the need] The [product name] is a [product category] that [key benefit, compelling reason to buy]. Unlike [primary competitive alternative], our product [statement of primary differentiation] If is fairly simple and restrictive at the same time. The template forces you to think about users and project in different way, and in many situations it proved useful when talking about features, UI and even technology. You can read more about vision statements at the blog of Cory Foy http://blog.coryfoy.com/2014/01/product-vision-statements-aka-your-elevator-pitch/

Great video about procrastination, decision avoidance and how to deal with them yourself.

It has been only three weeks since last post and it is already time to think about new month and probably new year. Finished: Minimum Viable Spanish  (without Mexican) ! Easy Spanish • Conjugation  (but only present verbs) The Winds of Khalakovo That's it. Every other thing is still in progress. The Complete iOS 8 Course with Swift  57% Complete  The Swift Programming Language  ~21% Duolingo: English Duolingo: Spanish The Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal 19% I want to write a proper "Plans for 2015" post pretty soon so if anyone was reading this I wish you a Happy New Year! :)

You can probably see that I do a lot of things lately and my plans for next month are always long and ambitious.  I commit publicly to them so that I feel accountable but recently more important for me is following my Priority List during the day. What is a Priority List? I want to start from the beginning. My interests go from programming and reading books to learning to play guitar and how to draw. How do I make progress in any of them? I have a strong feeling of  stretching too thin and doing too many things at the same time. There are days when I can do them all and days when I hardly have time for one or two. Am I making any progress? Am I wasting my time? I strongly believe in Habits that Leo Babauta writes on his blog  http://zenhabits.net/ . The idea is to not think about what I should do, just follow the good habits. When I have to think consciously I often fail and do something stupid like read 'news' or facebook. I want to fight with that. I have re...

I wanted to read something outside of my comfort zone. As I try to learn English and I am writing blog posts in English it seemed like a good idea to read something about writing. My choice of a book was more accidental than deliberate, but I am pretty happy with what I have learned. Of course, it did not make me a writer in a couple of hours. I have gained some insight into writing, practical use of grammar and structure of stories that was interesting just in itself, but there were also some more general ideas included. How to think about writing, how to deal with critics and knowing your colleagues and they craft (like photojournalism and design) can be applied to any craft you do. Writing big books, should be divided into chapters, parts, that you can think about - something that fits in your head. It is much too easy to be overwhelmed by a 300 pages you have to write. Divide those into smaller parts. When you write the first version, you should lower your standards. Tr...

Installation Easy tutorial:  https://golang.org/doc/install Official How to:  Tutorial:  https://golang.org/doc/code.html Available also as a video: Github I have noticed that  TJ Holowaychuk  is creating a lot of projects with "go-" prefix. I thought it might be a good idea as well. The thing is you can't use such packages out of the box. Default import looks like: import "github.com/tj/go-debug" But you can't do: go- debug.debug ( "sending mail" ) In Go, last folder name and package are the same things so you cannot even write: package go- debug If it is so hard, why to do it? For me, most important thing is to easily see which projects are written in Go. You cannot use this project in the folder with the same name as the repository name. So how are others dealing with it? How to use projects on Github with "go" prefix? 1. Create a directory in the repository to be used as the namespace nam...

I have finished the course I started more than a year ago . I would probably finish it earlier if it would not extend from 26 to 32 levels in the meantime, and now I hope it will stay at 32 :) What is good about it is that many of the words were completely new and alien. Good thing that after learning them I started to see them in the books so my comprehension improved a lot. Of course best thing is that the pronunciation is coupled with the words so I could familiarize myself with it and hopefully even spoken communication improved. So if you want to learn some new words check it out: http://www.memrise.com/course/3093/advanced-vocabulary-2/  Or you may be interested in the new one I am starting right now:  http://www.memrise.com/course/197810/audio-advanced-vocabulary/ . This one has 4144 words so it could take me ten years to finish :) If you do not know Memrise , the idea behind it is the same as for Anki . Both of them help you with  spaced rep...

Really nice a short for a Sanderson book in the universe of Mistborn series after 300 years. Plot was interesting and I liked the characters. In comparison to other Sanderson books I did not though all the time how those characters were stupid as was often the case in other books. Rating: 8/10

Today I have finished learning last level of Duolingo English Course for Polish speakers. Of course I cannot not just leave it. We all forget pretty fast so I am going to refresh it every day as I used to learn it every day. As I stated previously Duolingo is best for for learning grammar and use of whole sentences. I highly recommend using it. I do not really know how exercises 'translating articles' work in Duolingo but right now I want to focus more on learning more words on Memrise. I have a couple of courses that I am trying to learn for nearly a year.

Finished: Remote NoSQL Distilled Praktyczna Improwizacja Mistborn The Well of Ascension The Hero of Ages Corporation Reading Club , September 10 Failed: I planned vacation with my wife. It did not happen unfortunately. Plans for October: Creativity, Inc. : Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace Game Programming Patterns by Bob Nystrom Refresh Healthy Programmer Buy Mac Buy device (to read programming books) eg. iPadMini. (this probably has to wait for another month) Progress: Memrise - 24/32 levels (last month it had 26 levels) Duolingo - almost finished Guitar - I bought new acoustic guitar and hope to start proper lessons this Saturday. iOS Programming - 12/29 chapters (I hope to buy Mac this month to speed it up) Swimming - once a week (right now it is on hold due to back ache) Events: ReadingClub - October

If you read installation instruction of node-inspector you would think that the only way to use it is to install it globally. Here I want to suggest embedding it in the project. Installation: $ npm install -g node-inspector $ npm install node-inspector --devDependencies After doing that, you need to add "debug" line to "scripts" part of  package.json "scripts": { "start": "node app.js", "debug": "./node_modules/.bin/node-debug app.js" } And run it: $ node-debug app.js $ npm run debug It has downsides, that is obvious, but in my opinion it has also big advantages.  New person on the team does not need to follow long readme of global modules to install - and remember how all of them are supposed to be run. Another advantage is ignoring all the problems that you may have with sudo (needing it to install anything global). In my opinion it is also simpler and more convenient. All commands ...