Writing by Jean-Marc Alkazzi
Intellectual Obesity is overconsumption without Action. Organizing your information is digestion. Retrieving your knowledge is absorption. Acting on your knowledge is growth. If you never Organize nor Retrieve, you may be full of shit without knowing it.
import SameRiverPoem from '../../components/SameRiverPoem.astro'; <SameRiverPoem />
import Poem from '../../components/Poem.astro'; <Poem slug="Be Brave!" lines={[ 'Up! from that comfortable chair', 'And take control of your life in despair!', '', 'You claim to be brave but barely brave-to-be', 'No amount of waiting will ever set you free', '', 'You need to act and choose your path', 'For Life is not waiting and chances will pass', '', 'The possibilities are not yours and never…
import Poem from '../../components/Poem.astro'; <Poem slug="Brave-to-be" lines={[ 'The ritual restarts as I sit with my notebook', 'Planning my life, and focusing on the outlook', '', 'The opportunities are endless, and the challenges few', 'I know I can do it, when time is due', '', 'I focus on becoming the best I can', 'I know I am brave, and I have a plan!', '', 'Committing too soon would…
A note to self on Mastery
Not all Stress is created equal
import Poem from '../../components/Poem.astro'; <Poem slug="PThD" lines={[ 'The panic hits at half past three.', '"I'm late! At home I should be!"', 'I rush back home with racing heart,', 'Then freeze... there's no unfinished part.', 'Months have passed since my defence,', 'But still my body stays so tense.', 'These phantom deadlines haunt my brain —', 'The PhD's lingering pain.', ]} />
"Without (leverage to change) policy, your tool is stepping back and allowing the brokenness to collapse under its own weight. A deeply flawed system can't be saved by Band-Aids, but it can easily absorb your happiness to slightly extend its viability." – Will Larson, Systems of Engineering Management [Sec 5.6.4] (2019) What's sad about it is people actively not caring about saving some systems.…
I just found a video by Andreas Kling from 6 years ago (2019.07.23): "Commute talk: How to get worse at programming" Funnily enough, the tips given are somehow what everyone is encouraged to do on a daily basis. 1. "Always start with googling and finding existing solutions to your project / problem." As if every project has to be created once only. That sounds stupid when you think about other…
import { Image } from 'astro:assets'; import topologicalSort from '../assets/sequence-as-priority/topological-sort.jpeg'; <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Labeling 900 things as P0 is 100% guaranteed to drive dysfunction.<br/><br/>A human brain cannot handle the idea that a critical priority isn't being actively worked on or isn't already complete.</p>— Evan LaPointe…
There is always more to do. Every waking hour is one tempting you to tackle your never-ending todo list. You know that by spending just 1hr now you would finish this or that. "Finishing" your todo list feels so close, yet never achievable. Aim for a todo stream instead. A "list" feels finite and is handled as such. You try to push through it to "be over, feel a sense of achievement, and relax". A…
Discover + Formulate + Solve
Glue engineers know the tools. They know the frameworks. They know which package to install. But ask them to build the tool itself — the database, the compiler, the scheduler — and they’re lost. They won’t build the next kernel. They won’t write the next compiler. They won’t create the next database. They won’t design the next OS. They won’t invent the next hypervisor. They won’t architect the…
How would one assess people to be hired? What to ask yourself in the process?
How to manage University with 2 part-time jobs? Or a PhD along a full-time job?
Let's learn about Python Environments as an adventure, shall we?
Reduce your suffering setting up your NVIDIA drivers on Linux.