The human mind is a strange beast. Rather than remaining focused on one thing throughout our lives, it constantly shape-shifts based on our surrounding environment. This is not only a survival but also an evolutionary mechanism. By oscillating between alternatives, the mind learns new concepts, and in doing so, elevates the human species (at least, in theory).
Two personalities are fighting for attention in every person’s mind — that of the pragmatic and the one of the emotional creative. Only when kept in balance do the two move us forward. Neglect one for too long, and your life gets miserable.
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I have recently bought an e-book by a Gumroad author named Luca Dellana. I have to admit I did it mainly to see how successful authors on Gumroad package their offerings. I was initially skeptical about the book, dismissing it as just another attempt to capitalize on the self-help trend. As I kept reading, however, I found a few clever references washing away my initial skepticism. One quote in particular, stuck in my mind, and I cannot seem to stop thinking about it:
“If you think about it, the very important never feels urgent. …
An advice to all of you who quit their jobs to bootstrap side projects — put measurable and strict boundaries to your work days.
Always shut down your computers at the end of the day.
Remind yourselves that the reason you wanted to bootstrap was to get rid of the hamster wheel.
And I totally loved it. You should do it too!
Originally published at https://preslav.me on June 28, 2021.
Here I am again, after a bit of hiatus after my last post. Things have been super exciting over here, and I cannot wait to share more info about what I have been working on. Let’s do things one by one, however. Allow me to start with (to me) the most unusual one of all. I was invited to participate in an episode of Go Time — one of my favorite developer podcasts!
Wait! Have you never been on a podcast before?
Nope, never! It’s ironic that someone who has listened to podcasts for more than 15 years and built…
COVID-19 made us rethink the ways we used to organize meetings and events. By moving them online, we made events more inclusive and accessible to a larger segment of the population. Unfortunately, that also made them indistinguishable from one another. It took much of their identity away. With that, many of the reasons people visited events for — random encounters, networking, exchanging contacts also got washed out.
Ironic as it sounds, once everything turned into one never-ending stream, it became more convenient to keep it running in the background rather than reach out to others. …
Procrastination is the cheapest way to see if something withstands the test of time.
People express a lot of negativity towards procrastination. I tend to see things a bit differently. When you have many ideas, often, the best thing to do is do nothing about them. Carefully incubate your thoughts and come back to them regularly. Things that stick will reveal themselves to you over time.
Originally published at https://preslav.me on April 5, 2021.
It’s good to think about simplicity in terms of the tradeoffs we make when we take a particular decision.
The other day, I stumbled upon this post from 2019, and a couple of points in it resonated with me:
… every decision made in order to simplify a program will cost something.
It’s good to think about simplicity in terms of the tradeoffs we make when we take a particular decision. Reducing language features might make the code easier to comprehend but slow down the adding of new functionality. …
Read the original post for free at https://preslav.me
Perhaps not known to everybody, Unsplash, the free stock photography service, offers its own set of APIs, one of which caught my attention in particular. As part of the project behind my Generative Art in Go book, I needed a way to obtain source image material without looking at it first. By blindly fetching an image, I could guarantee that the final art sketch would be a process of chaos + generative algorithm and not a subject to my decision.
I found the following URL to be a straightforward way to get…
I found my way of living in peace with macOS Big Sur’s new Control Center
Whether you love it or hate it, macOS Big Sur is here to stay. Moreover, it is the first version of what looks like a future direction across Apple’s entire ecosystem. I get it; the new UX might seem outlandish for many of those who have not worked extensively with the iPad. Even for someone who has worked extensively with the iPad for years, I gave it a few quizzical looks at the beginning while looking for my familiar things.
One of the significant design changes in Big Sur is the introduction of Control Center, known from iOS and iPadOS.
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