Resources II

Jason R. Briggs, Snake Wrangling For Kids, [Link]

A nice little book about programming in Python. Written in a try to be easy to read and understand by children (although failing to be in some of the later chapters), I think if I will ever have kids they will get this book printed out together with their first computer. It might be helpful for them. Most likely I think that because I always would have liked to have some skill in programming my PC when I was a kid.

Jeffrey Elkner, Allen B. Downey, Chris Meyers, How to Think Like a Computer Scientist. Learning with Python, [Link]

Something like the former, just with an emphasis on a more mature crowd. I will definitely try to use the book to understanding  some of the concepts of programming. Somehow even after years of using these machines like a pro, I never understood some of the most basic concepts in theit programming.

bookn3rd has a howto on making your own quill [Link]. Now, where do I get feathers? She says it is harder than it looks to master it, but how would I know if I would’t try?

And lifehacker has the idea to use vintage calendars as new ones [Link]. After all the Gregorian calendar is repeating itself every 14 years or so, and some of these old calendars just look really, really good. The lazy breed of course finds another lifehack in that: just put up 14 different calendars on your wall and you will never have to buy a new one.

How I Failed to Learn Something Useful

One fateful decision I made for my life (which I didn’t even know WAS such a fateful decision at the time I made it) occured in the end of 5th grade. At that time we were told to choose some electives. If we wanted.

Well, it wasn’t as if it was mandatory to take them, but we were told they always would be helpful later on. I looked over the sheet they gave us and somehow doubted that.

It was mostly extra sports classes. And mostly sport at insane times. And still with the same teachers as the regular classes. I was living a bit farther away, so a class at 7pm was not really feasible for me.  The last bus home left at 4.40.

But two classes struck my chord: IT and Touch Typing.