Why I (accidentally) make life hard.

Today I've noticed a trend. Each term since first year, there's a time where I just stop doing anything school related. Is this because I have things on the go? Maybe, but I always have a busy life. Is it because it's too hard? Not really. Is it because the material is boring? Nope. So why do I do this?

I asked this question today, as I came to class for the first time in 1.5 weeks. Everything was exciting, fresh and new. I was behind in material and loved it. As the prof drew new formulas and equations on the board my mind lit up with connections that weren't fed to me, postulating how this related to earlier concepts with being explicitly told, quickly flipping through the text needing to extract information missed lectures in minutes to keep up. It was a total rush; It was fun.

Apparently, I self-handicap. I intentionality make life harder for me. After walking through a number of varying situations in the past where I have done this I narrowed it down to 3 reasons:

1. It's fun to be in the fray. Anyone who has been in a hackathon knows how addictive the time constraint can be. The panic, the spurts of creativity, quickly overcoming obstacles and finally squeezing everything in last minute is intoxicating. I feel the same way about everything. So when I hit a lecture and all the material is new and exciting and it's tricky to keep up, it's amazing. If I go to every lecture, I don't feel challenged, it's like playing on easy mode. I just feel like a dumb sponge absorbing the concept sand spitting them back out verbatim. 
2. When I fail it gives me an excuse to save my ego. I consider myself a smart guy. When my actions, like getting a 40% on a test, tell me otherwise, I get a lot of cognitive dissonance going on (this is when the brain gets mismatched information, fun fact: the brain HATES this, most weird psychological behaviors can be attributed to attempting to resolve cognitive dissonance). However if I can tell myself "Oh you did well for only giving yourself 3 hours to study", BAM! Dissonance gone, and , in my eyes, I'm still a smart guy.
3. When I succeed it gives me an excuse to brag. I've never been one to play life normally. I love telling and creating stories. So, playing by the book, studying all weekend, and getting the standard 80-90% on the midterm is normal. If I told someone that they would be like "Well, of course you did... that's how it works." However, if I studied for only 4 hours, and had to reverse engineer a theorem during the midterm, and came up with a crazy way to solve question 3 because I didn't memorize the procedure, and only got 60%, I am more proud of that 60 then a well studied, easy-to-get 80.

So, how can I use this realization as a new tool to be better in school? No idea. It's a shame it took my 4 years to really understand this about me, just as I'm on my way out.

Building a Hacker's Deck

Everyone seems to have a pretty definite opinion on the choice between Desktop or Laptop. I've fallen into the former category mostly due to my love of screen realestate. However, I tend to participate in a fair number of hackathons, code-jams, and the like, the usual protocol is either alone in my room, or lugging my not-so-dainty system around.

My experience with doing development in a laptop has not been great. A combination of being incredibly picky over interface devices, and being incredibly used to 2.5 screens (I have a small 10 inch screen complementing my duals), I found the process cramped and over all unsatisfactory.

Enter the Mobile Desktop.

I've been dying to design and build something in the middle. A computer which is portable, but it's design isn't bound to certain keyboards and screens. Here's my wish list:

• Small form factor. Something approaching the Asus EeeBox
• Hard drive space is largely irrelevant. Anything over 30 gigs should be good
• Lots of RAM. At least 4gig, hoping for 8gig
• At least a Dual Core 2.5ghz
• 4 USB ports, but something in the realm of 6-8 would be fantastic
• I would like to have support for two screens, but I think that's a pipe dream
• Integrated Wireless would be nice, but I have a nexus1 for that;)
• Lastly, I want to integrate a small battery into the device. Something allowing for 20-60minutes of run time. This will allow me to move the device around without worry of it turning off. This might be tricky, but really worth the extra effort.
• Budget? Under $500

My two approaches I'm thinking of is either buying an EeeBox, gutting it, and adding on the additional parts. The second approach is to simple build it from scratch. This is more favorable simply because I can avoid the Atom processor which is meant for long battery life, which I have no need for. However obtaining a good case to fit this weird computer might be tricky.

If you have any tips or part suggestions, I 'm all ears!

Noodles!

One of my friends, Ross Robinson, is working on an interesting little side project. A nifty http request based external database. He calls it NoodleDB.


What's really interesting about it is that it allows for completely client-side applications, while still providing a place to store all your data. The main purpose of the project is to provide a service for very quick prototyping, letting you push and retrieve arbitrary JSON objects just by http request. I'm alittle bit in love with this idea, seeing as I hate setting up databases and all those finicky things.

I spent alot of time working out how to do asynchronous database connections between app engine and javascript while working on Omnomnom, and I think I'm going to wrap that up into a library that'll plug right into NoodleDB.

Ross is mainly focusing on the server-side API end of it. In inspiration of my work with Xo-Skeleton I'm going to be building a javascript library called xo-noodle.js. I'm thinking for having three commands:


xo-noodle.setup("database url");
xo-noodle.save("json object", [optional:extension url], [optional:html img id]);
xo-noodle.query("query", "callback function", [optional:extension url], [optional:html img id]);

///Example
xo-noodle.setup("yousite.com/db");
xo-noodle.save("data","/user");
xo-noodle.query("query", "displayItem()", "/item");


Setup sets up xo-noodle to point to a certain location.
Save pushes a json object to the location provided by setup, as well as pointing it to any sub url provided. IF you also include a html img tag id, it will populate it with a loading gif and a success gif on finish as well.
Query sends a query to the location provided, pushing the result to the provided function. The optional parameters work the same as Saving.

I'll be fleshing out the first version shortly and iterate from there.