I’d originally planned to get started today, but’ve had a few nights of insomnia, so took the day off to rest. Goals are to get a feel for the Young Hands program; figure out if I’m interested, enquire about JWRD computing, get reading TAOCP and sort out an IRC connection, as well as timestamping daily activities to see what I’m spending time on. No time estimates included for tasks, since I’ve no idea how long any of this’ll take. [edit: time estimates added after each task]
1. Read #o logs for the month of Feb 2020, and write weekly log summaries. This should give an idea of what YH is about. (20)
2. Write an article stating what I think YH is, what I want, and whether the two intersect. (4)
3. Setup a box to be permanently connected to #o (4)
4. Research setting up an IRC bouncer (4)
5. Spend 20 hours studying Knuth’s TAOCP (20)
6. Enquire regarding http://dorion-mode.com/2019/11/jwrd-computing-the-why-how-what-and-way-forward/ in #o (3)
7. Publish daily agenda timestamps (7)
Summary: Everything’s tentative, but I’ll soon figure out if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew!
Week 1 Postmortem
So, the first (healthy) week managed to produce [edit: HALF] a day’s work. Let’s examine the fail: I spent the first coupla days doing the classic “my homework’s due – guess I’ll tidy my room!”, ie. stuff that in and of itself is good to do; just as long as it’s not what I should be doing RIGHT NOW. This mostly consisted of reading a bunch of Trilema articles.
On Wednesday, my box crashed, disconnecting me from #o (needless to say, point 4. above didn’t get done); my first instinct was not to reconnect, since I hadn’t done any work yet, and this might get exposed (hiding from problems makes them go away!!1). I finally did an hour of Knuth (see 5.) in the evening.
On Thursday, I did 2 more hours of Knuth – which was interesting but REALLY difficult – I’ve not sat down and thought really deeply about something maths-y since… 2018? It literally gave me a headache.
The daily timestamps (7. above) – such as they are (avoided doing ‘em, since they’d highlight all the work that wasn’t being done) – indicate no work at all on Friday, and cleaning my flat for a couple of hours on Saturday. Oh, and at some point, I spent maybe half an hour writing an article (still unfinished and unpublished) on my experience of COVID-19.
Before consulting the timestamps, I’d estimated the above summed to 8 hours’ work, but itemising the sorry state of affairs, I’m only seeing 5.5 hours.
It briefly occurred to me that I could lie – pretend to have gotten more done – but I immediately thought better of it. After all, lying to myself (“this situation is okay!”) is one thing; lying to others is something else entirely.
I was surprised – both at how averse I am to doing what I’m supposed to – as well as how mentally taxing deliberate, structured study is. Oh, and just how little I got done in a week!
So, I guess Week 2 should consist of actually doing Week 1’s work; not being lazy 2 weeks running…
Comment by Daniel Godwin — April 19, 2020 @ 7:53 pm
Heh, it’s called “avoidance through work” – but the good news there is that you can even make *that* pay better for you. Simply stick to the rule that you have to *write up* on what you read during the day. Feel free to publish it here as a new article, there’s no problem at all (and no limit to how many or what sort of articles you publish, as long as they are genuinely your writing). Not to mention that if you write it and publish it, chances are you’ll get some feedback /discussion started on it too so …all the better. To recap: make work avoidance pay too and you’ll still get ahead!
Ahahaha, classic indeed. Takes a lot of hard work to be able otherwise to trust those “first instincts” to do you any favours at all! Anyways, glad you reconnected, what’s there to lose – other than losing perhaps on the way those same problems, possibly – anyway?
Tbf Knuth is not exactly easy going at the best of times so I can fully believe the headache for real (though that also means you really set the mind to work there, so not that bad). I’d have thought though that “professional gambling” does involve quite a lot of Maths – doesn’t it? Talking of which, I’d totally read your writing on what this professional gambling is/involved – why not write about it?
With programming otherwise, it might help to get started by needing it basically so on some smaller chunk that you can however get done to keep you then going. Did you have a look at Eulora at all ? From one perspective it’s a huge casino (though odds are fair on everything, the house doesn’t make money from that and it’s not meant to, either), too! Or maybe speak up in chan about it.
Eh, so spend another hour or so and publish it already. The leaving of stuff unfinished is just about the *worst* way to waste your time really. IF you started on something, then finish it!
Don’t lie to yourself either – it’s never helping, no matter how it might seem in the moment. And if anything, I’d say first and foremost don’t lie *to yourself*, precisely because … there’s no way to run away from yourself ever, so might as well make best and honest friends!
Another name for surprises is …discoveries! But yeah, it can come as a bit of a shock to see the unforgiving numbers, especially if it’s new and all that. Just stick to it and focus on improving things one bit at a time – it tends to work best for the long term that way.
Well, if you leave it that, it probably will end up with “being lazy 2 weeks running”. Break it down and pick one thing, so here’s a question for you – what are you going to write up and publish by Tuesday evening?
Comment by Diana Coman — April 20, 2020 @ 7:37 am
Heh, it’s called “avoidance through work” – but the good news there is that you can even make *that* pay better for you. Simply stick to the rule that you have to *write up* on what you read during the day. Feel free to publish it here as a new article, there’s no problem at all (and no limit to how many or what sort of articles you publish, as long as they are genuinely your writing). Not to mention that if you write it and publish it, chances are you’ll get some feedback /discussion started on it too so …all the better. To recap: make work avoidance pay too and you’ll still get ahead!
>>>Great Idea! Reminds me of a TLP article where Ballas suggests brushing one’s teeth after eating anything to prevent snacking. EVERY Trilema article I read’ll be commented on here from now on.
Ahahaha, classic indeed. Takes a lot of hard work to be able otherwise to trust those “first instincts” to do you any favours at all! Anyways, glad you reconnected, what’s there to lose – other than losing perhaps on the way those same problems, possibly – anyway?
>>> Quite, and add to the list of surprises discoveries the tendency to go with instinct, rather than reason. Of course it’s unreasonable to hide from/ignore problems, no matter how instinctive. Like you say – what is there to lose – other than baggage one would want to dump as soon as possible, anyway!
Tbf Knuth is not exactly easy going at the best of times so I can fully believe the headache for real (though that also means you really set the mind to work there, so not that bad). I’d have thought though that “professional gambling” does involve quite a lot of Maths – doesn’t it? Talking of which, I’d totally read your writing on what this professional gambling is/involved – why not write about it?
>>> Haha yea, from what I gather speaking to CompSci friends, everyone seems to agree it’s a classic work, but no one seems to have actually read it. The maths of poker isn’t particularly taxing – it’s mostly a simple heuristics and basic probability – the issue I’m having with Knuth is the mental effort and focus required to follow the mathematical proofs: there are no mental shortcuts I’m aware of to bypass this work required.
With programming otherwise, it might help to get started by needing it basically so on some smaller chunk that you can however get done to keep you then going. Did you have a look at Eulora at all ? From one perspective it’s a huge casino (though odds are fair on everything, the house doesn’t make money from that and it’s not meant to, either), too! Or maybe speak up in chan about it.
>>> I think I’ll stick to Knuth, at least the 20 hours originally planned, first – I’ve also got that awk tutorial you linked me to (https://grymoire.com/Unix/Awk.html#uh-4). Eulora sounds like a real rabbit hole, and might be beyond my capabilities at the moment (I couldn’t even get trb setup a while back).
Eh, so spend another hour or so and publish it already. The leaving of stuff unfinished is just about the *worst* way to waste your time really. IF you started on something, then finish it!
>>> Noted! There’s probably another article here about leaving things half finished (articles, medschool etc.)
Don’t lie to yourself either – it’s never helping, no matter how it might seem in the moment. And if anything, I’d say first and foremost don’t lie *to yourself*, precisely because … there’s no way to run away from yourself ever, so might as well make best and honest friends!
>>> Quite! Gets me thinking – what else am I lying to myself about? Sounds like another article!
Another name for surprises is …discoveries! But yeah, it can come as a bit of a shock to see the unforgiving numbers, especially if it’s new and all that. Just stick to it and focus on improving things one bit at a time – it tends to work best for the long term that way.
>>> I think that’s one of my mental hangups – concentrating on the whole (“my week’s work”) vs the individual parts (“I’ll spend 2 hours this morning reading Knuth). Then, once I get behind schedule, the monolithic WEEK’S WORK seems insurmountable, so… do nothing! And yes, the starting point may be feeble, but – all the more room to grow!
Well, if you leave it that, it probably will end up with “being lazy 2 weeks running”. Break it down and pick one thing, so here’s a question for you – what are you going to write up and publish by Tuesday evening?
>>> I’ll have a gambling and Covid article up by Tuesday eve; thanks for the feedback!
Comment by Daniel Godwin — April 20, 2020 @ 6:40 pm
[…] year or less, though that’s a story for another day), having bitten off way more than I could chew. It’s also a somewhat odd realisation that I can’t recall having worked with others […]
Pingback by Young Hands and New Plans « Young Hands Club — April 27, 2020 @ 8:35 pm
I just took a peek at that Awk tutorial link; the first sentence in that Dynamic Variables section is misleading (there are other ways to pass in variables so by itself it’s not a strong reason for inlining in a shell script or not) and the later paragraph “This is a very important concept…” reads to me as mostly nonsense, misspellings aside. Jumping to the top, “If you user Linux, you have GAWK.” – oh dear.
I dunno, if it’s helpful for you then great, but if not, it might not be just you :) Fwiw, most of my awk I picked up from the Gawk info pages (https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/index.html), though that’s from a background of already knowing C and regexps and such.
Comment by Jacob Welsh — April 29, 2020 @ 3:07 am
Jacob, I linked that tutorial in chan (possibly for Aaron or for Will), as the gentlest and ok-ish intro I knew of. The manual and gawk info pages are of course the source otherwise and better than any “tutorial” but by the point of linking they were clearly too steep for those struggling over weeks and weeks to do a simple thing otherwise.
Comment by Diana Coman — April 29, 2020 @ 8:00 am
http://ossasepia.com/2020/04/21/ossasepia-logs-for-22-Mar-2020/#1022706 is what I’m finding in the channel, which from a distance doesn’t look like he’d tried anything else with awk yet.
Comment by Jacob Welsh — April 29, 2020 @ 4:04 pm
That’s where I got it, yea – apologies for not linking to the logs in the agenda. I’m totally new to Awk – thanks for the additional suggestion!
Comment by Daniel Godwin — April 29, 2020 @ 4:52 pm