Things I Like
- Maria
- XKCD
- Randal Munroe’s amazing webcomic about “romance, sarcasm, math, and language”. It simply is the best.
- The Accidental Seabirds
- These are the guys I used to play music with. They’re some of the most sincere, kind, and talented people you’d ever meet. They play shows all over NJ, and have been touring the US lately. They put on a great show, and their two albums are both solid.
- Dhamma.org
- The website for a meditation technique I practice – Vipassana. There are local centers all around the world, where you can attend free 10-day meditation retreats.
- GNU & The Free Software Foundation
- These are the good guys in software design. Their ideas are radical and can be off-putting at first; they’re willing to sacrifice virtually any amount of convenience in the name of Freedom. These ideas matter, a lot. Check out the TED Talk by Richard Stallman, the de-facto leader of both projects, to get an idea of what they’re all about.
- Cygwin
- If you’re a programmer working in the windows environment, you should be using Cygwin. It provides a GNU/Linux style shell and associated tools directly in windows. There’s a thin compatibility layer, but once you get accustomed to it, you hardly even notice it’s there. Make sure you use MinTTY for the console, not cmd.exe.
- The Lars Method
- An intuitive move-efficient method for solving the rubix cube. There are arguably faster methods which require more combination memorization and pattern recognition, but I find the lars method to be the most enjoyable to use, because it continuously challenges you to work through problems using the intellect, rather than just recognizing patterns and applying algorithms.
- Bears
- If I ever become rich, I’m building a bear sanctuary in my backyard.
- Tau as the Circle Constant
- I think tau is the better circle constant. I don’t know if its worth the pain to switch, now, but I do think we would have been better off using this number from the getgo.