Sunday, September 30, 2007

I've found free time!

Yeah... During last days I've spent rather a lot of time doing non-university work. Although it was programming and nothing more. Not very good for psyche for now I have no ideas what to do else. Moreover I've broke up with girl friend a month ago, so I've even didn't meet any friend in September (in except of in university). Eh... Sp for mow I've only have the ability to sit behind my computer until 2 o'clock at night...

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Some free time coming?

It's the end of September and I'm rising my study activity. On last Saturday I've passed two laboratory works in programming and today I've passed one work in physics. Badly only for 4 points from 5. But that was a result of that I didn't remember one formula, so I'll try in future to understand information better.

Also I've finished reading book "Pragmatic programmer". I think the next book will be "Design Patterns". It content looks rather good and was mentioned some times in PP.

Also at these days I'm collecting some medical documents for me to be approved as unsuitable to serve in Russian Army. It's makes some problems because I need to visit a lot of organizations only to be sent to organization of lower level.


Thought, I hope in close time I'll finally could make me give myself more free time from university study. Apparently writing this post is a result of that intention. :-)

Monday, September 17, 2007

Pareto principle

Pareto principle is a well-known rule of effectiveness. It also called 80-20 rule. In brief: you get 80% of result from 20% of effort.

It means that to get good result you don't need to work very hard. Just work and do only necessary things. To use computer you don't need to know details of its construction, you only need to know it's user manual. Of course knowledge of it's CPU specifications can make you a better user but in most cases it is spare. You need much lesser time to get most important knowledge than to become an expert. And the use of Pareto principle is that you don't need to be an expert in most cases. But what is also very useful: you can get a lot by little effort. So even if you read a small book about unknown theme you can get rather much knowledge.

Of course that don't mean that you needn't to be an expert at all. I think to be successful you need to be an expert in something. For example in getting much knowledge without great efforts... Or, what is much better, be an expert in living your life.

Asciidoc

I've recently found new tool for me: asciidoc. It is intended to create documentation in various formats from plain text. What is good that markup elements are not like but more simple symbols so text can be easily written and read without conversion to other formats. I think I'll find use for asciidoc in my projects. Documentation is always needed.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Again and again: where is time?

So I've recently written that I have a lot of work and now I've realized that now I couldn't find time for my own activities, i.e. programming. I was constantly working during this week and made a lot of work, but it all was about university. And next week doesn't promise to be different. What to do? How to make all university staff and made something for yourself? Again I meet this problem. Of course "myself" isn't only programming, it is also other thing but this is the first about which I think. Tomorrow I will visit big book market with my friend. It is better than sitting at home all day.


What to do?
  • Firstly, now I'm actively using Todoist to manage my tasks and time arrangement. I still couldn't use calendars or organizers but I found a good use for that simple webapp.
  • On next week I'll try to find time to do something that is not-university. Surely it will be some programming (and what you awaited from me? :).
  • May be found some non-computer activity? Or at least non-programming? I couldn't guess what it can be.

And also about my current activities: some of my time is spent on working with book for one of our professors. He has a book about his subject but it exists only in one instance. So I've scanned it and now make text recognition. Rather dull work because my OCR is rather simple (but free).

And idea of a day: Do something meaningful :)

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

A lot of work

Eh... I've started new studying year, and now have a lot of homework. And I'm trying to do it as soon as possible. Before new tasks will come. For a previous day I haven't found a time for programming, but hope soon I'll allocate my time better and find some time for my hobbies :). And I've bought book "Pragmatic programmer" by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas!

Update: add a link to http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ on book title.

Monday, September 03, 2007

Home network

As I've already posted I had bought a notebook. An now I'm writing from it. I get a wifi card to my desktop computer. It's a D-Link DWL-G510. Both notebook and card supports 802.11g so I've expected rather speedy communication (54 Mbps). I've got it. But only after some "adventures".

Firstly, I found that by default my computers try to found wireless router and communicate across it. So I've needed to create "computer-computer" connection. Really it took me a lot of time to understand this. May be I should google theory of wireless networks, but it's not my habit to google something :(

However after a lot of clicking-and-typing I've got my computers connected in a network. But there was another problem: I wanted my notebook to be connected to internet through desktop PC. I shared my internet connection on it, as my friend advised, but this gave me nothing. After some stumbling with that problem I found that the solution is to set correct IP-addresses on wireless connection on notebook. May be something is spare but for know I haven't got a desire to make new experiments: set DNS-server IP to same as in internet connectio; set mane gateway to IP-address of wifi-card on desktop. After that my connection started to work!

I have to say that there is no significant slowdown on working with internet on notebook. Despite added wireless connection all works fine and rather fast. Sometimes there are pauses in connection to internet but they also exist on desktop so I think they are the result of a work of an ISP (or my software).

All in all I'm pleased that I've got a wireless connection at home and now can work with internet both on PC and notebook.