Frustration with motivating myself

I don't think it's occurred to me that, especially now, no one will be monitoring me all the time to make sure that I'm doing something and that I need to take charge of my actions.

The options I have considered are to:

• work with other people - but then I'll get distracted unnecessarily sometimes (not that it's not FUN to work alongside others!)
• Xinhong suggests studying alone at the library or somewhere where people can see me so that I'll feel self-conscious if I slack off. This has worked pretty well in the past for me, but the problem is that it conditions you to be super lazy at home, and I would argue that in fact it makes it harder to work at home. 

I would be really happy to hear any suggestions you have or what you do to overcome this problem. Please leave a comment or email me!

Goal: Write my blog posts without revision

A lot of times I find myself putting too much thought into how I will phrase something on this blog. I don't think that's a good use of time in this scenario, whereas for something like project pages on my website I would put more careful revision and attention to design and content. But for something like a blog, which I shall treat as a mind dump from now on, I shouldn't spend the extraneous amount of time worrying about specific content or word choice or whatever.

My hope is that over time, I will get better at saying the intended things on the first try. Of course, it might not always be the right or best response, but for this scenario I am okay with that.

I will correct typos though!

The lesson for me here is to pick the appropriate response for the scenario/environment.

Troubles with sleeping at night

Ren brought this up. A potential cause for my sleep issues is overexposure to blue/ultraviolet light. Specifically, electronic device screens are probably messing up my circadian rhythm. Things I could do to improve this condition:

• more exposure to sunlight during the day
• stop using technology closer to bed time. Would need to come up with a way to do something at nights. Handwritten todolists + reading books?

Interesting side note: Most of the sun's energy is infrared, but it still contains some ultraviolet and of course visible light. (Integrate the solar radiation spectrum below for each region)

Source:

http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Health_Letter/2012/May/blue-light-has-a-dark-side

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgywXlr-lOVrRyn6ztk-eDxlJMX7JG1kI1F5YAP4p4yaxuLQkzowjjpifes-hQtfmkh-l1fvug41tsMRCV_d_joetefH1659rP8XvbDxqKOIlqM_ARAshv4-A6GN0Hw1qAxNfI8yc8IAGYo/s1600/Solar_Spectrum.png

Hiding Desktop Icons on OSX

In terminal:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false

killall Finder

Playing music with shower head

The stream of water coming out of my shower head exits at a certain frequency. By touching the shower head, I can control the frequency of the sound coming out and was able to play hot cross buns!

Mac: jump to beginning/end of line

Beginning: ctrl a
End: ctrl e

Git: Pull a remote branch to your local repository

In order to pull a remote branch to your local repository:

git pull
git checkout -b <new_branch> origin/<new_branch>

Do not:
git checkout -b < new_branch >
git pull origin < new_branch >


Source: http://www.wetware.co.nz/2009/07/pull-a-git-branch-from-remote/

Deleting your most recent git commit or push

If you have committed junk but not pushed,

git reset --soft HEAD~1

HEAD~1 is a shorthand for the commit before head. Alternatively you can refer to the SHA-1 of the hash you want to reset to. --soft option will delete the commit but it will leave all your changed files "Changes to be committed", as git status would put it.

If you want to get rid of any changes to tracked files in the working tree since the commit before head use --hard instead.

Now if you already pushed and someone pulled which is usually my case, you can't use git reset. You can however do a git revert,

git revert HEAD

This will create a new commit that reverses everything introduced by the accidental commit.

Source: http://nakkaya.com/2009/09/24/git-delete-last-commit/