Sailing: You don't need a boat. Most cities near the water will have some sort of sailing club where for $300 a year you can join and use their fleet of boats. My end goal is to do some sort of week long solo trip.
Rock Climbing: Lots of fun and a great work out.
Meditation: Just getting started with this, but have already seen improvements in concentration and a decrease in anxiety.
Introductory Deep Learning: http://course.fast.ai/ This is probably my favorite course I've ever taken online.
>have already seen improvements in concentration and a decrease in anxiety.
Interesting to hear. Meditation is something I have considered looking into for a similar purpose. Do you have any recommendations on a good place to start?
I've been doing this for a few years now, so not new, but I've always been interested in anything that could be considered a science of optimized decision making. This has included Control Theory, Systems Theory, Operations Research, Economics, Statistics, and Machine Learning.
Most recently it has been Integer and Constraint Programming, which is a typical modeling tool employed by the first three mentioned. I find them interesting because of how much progress solvers have made in the last two decades. It's amazing how often someone finds an NP-Complete problem and doesn't even attempt to try and solve it. Yet with some practical modeling best practices and modern solvers you can get extremely close to extact solutions...and sometimes perfectly exact solutions.
> It's amazing how often someone finds an NP-Complete problem and doesn't even attempt to try and solve it.
Just out of curiosity, how are you coming across these? I've dabbled in integer programming with both Gurobi and SAS (once for hobby purposes, and twice to solve some pretty major problems for work). For some reason, I've found it to be some of the most enjoyable work I've done to date - perhaps because of the satisfaction of being able to say "this is (one of) the best possible solution(s) to this problem."
I'm constantly looking for new problems to play around with (particularly those with business applications), but I don't find too many. In fact, just yesterday, I was commuting home running through business models and trying to imagine likely unsolved problems where you'd be minimizing/maximizing something subject to constraints...
Learning Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) paradigms. Combining pure functions with reactive concepts (where variables change as their values change) is something that sparks my interest. Also the idea of chaining functions together to create composable pipelines of functions without any local state: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfWR3dKnFIo&feature=youtu.be
Improv. I've been taking classes at a local improv theater in Houston and it has been the most enjoyment I've gotten out of an activity in many years. For two hours a week I am encouraged to say, do, be anything that comes into my head, and react to situations without the filters I have to abide by at work and at home. I'm almost done with Level 1, and have our "graduation show" next weekend. After that comes level 2 and a few more advanced topics and methods.
Web App Development and Computer Science. I don't plan on making it a career but I started learning to program a few years ago after reading The Innovators by Walter Isaacson and it turned into a healthy addiction. Right now I'm throwing together a video library, actually for my improv theater, with Django to search for videos by improv troupe. I'm also doing Harvard's online CS50 course because I want to dive a little deeper into the science of it all.
I learning software engineering! Right now I'm using python to learn about OOP, because I've never really understood the paradigm. I figured it's high time I buckled down and figured it out. But to be honest, I think I'd like to try my hand at systems engineering if I get the chance to program professionally.
I am also learning Norwegian, because I want to talk like a viking.
And I am learning Go (Baduk). It is the type of game I will be learning for the rest of my life. Which is why it is my favorite :)
Word of warning about OOP: it's just a programming paradigm. It's not the best or the only way to do things, but some 1990s era educational material might tell you so.
Currently learning Elixir/Phoenix as well as web development in general. I've done desktop and a small intranet site throughout my career so this is new to me.
I keep coming back to the idea of learning erlang/elixir. Can you point out the resources you've been using? Functional programming is still a little foreign to me.
Just started the Coursera Nand2Tetris course. I don't have a comp sci background so it's pretty fascinating stuff to learn from the gate-logic level.
On the job I'm still learning best practices of enterprise software architecture. There's so many opinions about the 'right' way to do things that I've focused on trying to get a better understanding of the organization I'm working in so I can suggest better directions to take.
* Crossfit advanced lifts - been doing it for a year, but going slow to build base strength and technique to avoid injuries. (At 300lbs 1RM DL, 255lbs 1RM squat, 230lbs 1RM front squat.)
* Amateur taxidermy - been reading a lot about it and applied for some taxidermy internships in my self-chosen period of unemployment. Mostly I'm interested in the skeletons of rodents and will probably stop when I can assemble a full skeleton.
* Sewing - just an oversize badger onesie this time.
* Machine Learning (obviously!) - pet project is calculating the probability of getting through the queue at the crossfit gym. And yes, current and predicted weather will be factors! :)
Neovim: I want to dig deeper into a small subset of tools I use a lot and a text editor sees a lot of use. Especially as I learn programming. So good place to start!
I signed up for 3 months of https://linuxacademy.com, dedicating at least 2 hours a day during the week and more on the weekends. System administration has been my weakness when it comes from delivering a product from development to production. I hope to be able to become a RHCE by April.
Oil painting. I often like to learn completely new, unrelated skills like this because it allows me to draw from unusual, and wide sources when working on solutions. People often wonder how I am able to 'think outside the box' and I believe it's because I have a wider, more varied set of skills to draw from.
[+] [-] reckoner2|9 years ago|reply
Rock Climbing: Lots of fun and a great work out.
Meditation: Just getting started with this, but have already seen improvements in concentration and a decrease in anxiety.
Introductory Deep Learning: http://course.fast.ai/ This is probably my favorite course I've ever taken online.
[+] [-] evo_9|9 years ago|reply
VR Sailing: http://store.steampowered.com/app/579050
[+] [-] setrofim_|9 years ago|reply
Interesting to hear. Meditation is something I have considered looking into for a similar purpose. Do you have any recommendations on a good place to start?
[+] [-] taeric|9 years ago|reply
Edit:. Both how and why.
[+] [-] saosebastiao|9 years ago|reply
Most recently it has been Integer and Constraint Programming, which is a typical modeling tool employed by the first three mentioned. I find them interesting because of how much progress solvers have made in the last two decades. It's amazing how often someone finds an NP-Complete problem and doesn't even attempt to try and solve it. Yet with some practical modeling best practices and modern solvers you can get extremely close to extact solutions...and sometimes perfectly exact solutions.
[+] [-] dbatten|9 years ago|reply
Just out of curiosity, how are you coming across these? I've dabbled in integer programming with both Gurobi and SAS (once for hobby purposes, and twice to solve some pretty major problems for work). For some reason, I've found it to be some of the most enjoyable work I've done to date - perhaps because of the satisfaction of being able to say "this is (one of) the best possible solution(s) to this problem."
I'm constantly looking for new problems to play around with (particularly those with business applications), but I don't find too many. In fact, just yesterday, I was commuting home running through business models and trying to imagine likely unsolved problems where you'd be minimizing/maximizing something subject to constraints...
[+] [-] sktrdie|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rrherr|9 years ago|reply
Fourier transform https://betterexplained.com/articles/an-interactive-guide-to... http://jackschaedler.github.io/circles-sines-signals/ https://books.google.com/books/about/Who_is_Fourier.html?id=...
Music information retrieval http://musicinformationretrieval.com/ https://www.audiolabs-erlangen.de/fau/professor/mueller/book...
[+] [-] zaque1213|9 years ago|reply
Web App Development and Computer Science. I don't plan on making it a career but I started learning to program a few years ago after reading The Innovators by Walter Isaacson and it turned into a healthy addiction. Right now I'm throwing together a video library, actually for my improv theater, with Django to search for videos by improv troupe. I'm also doing Harvard's online CS50 course because I want to dive a little deeper into the science of it all.
[+] [-] lubonay|9 years ago|reply
Started some Blender beginner tutorials. Currently working on a glazed donut.
Also doing a Hacker News client for Android as a side project for some practice. That's how I found this thread.
[+] [-] kj01a|9 years ago|reply
I am also learning Norwegian, because I want to talk like a viking.
And I am learning Go (Baduk). It is the type of game I will be learning for the rest of my life. Which is why it is my favorite :)
[+] [-] exDM69|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jetti|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spyspy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artimaeis|9 years ago|reply
On the job I'm still learning best practices of enterprise software architecture. There's so many opinions about the 'right' way to do things that I've focused on trying to get a better understanding of the organization I'm working in so I can suggest better directions to take.
[+] [-] partisan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] medell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blabla_blublu|9 years ago|reply
It's been a great learning experience just to see what AWS has to offer and the alexa SDK is very well thought out.
[+] [-] sshine|9 years ago|reply
* Amateur taxidermy - been reading a lot about it and applied for some taxidermy internships in my self-chosen period of unemployment. Mostly I'm interested in the skeletons of rodents and will probably stop when I can assemble a full skeleton.
* Sewing - just an oversize badger onesie this time.
* Machine Learning (obviously!) - pet project is calculating the probability of getting through the queue at the crossfit gym. And yes, current and predicted weather will be factors! :)
[+] [-] kk3399|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tikandak|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tuomeyp|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vonbrownie|9 years ago|reply
Neovim: I want to dig deeper into a small subset of tools I use a lot and a text editor sees a lot of use. Especially as I learn programming. So good place to start!
[+] [-] slantaclaus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EduardoBautista|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superquest|9 years ago|reply
Great material!
[+] [-] Pandabob|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jtsummers|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evo_9|9 years ago|reply