Posts for: #Misc

Drifting vs. Deliberately improving

`I've been playing guitar for over 25 years -- but I still suck at it.

I spent my first ever bonus I got (~RM2,000) on a brand new Norman Guitar, and now I'm the proud owner of multiple expensive guitars and amps ... but all that expensive gear hasn't improved my playing one iota. Even though I used religiously change my guitar strings every month.

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Sign you Git Commits to Github with A Yubikey

I found a few tutorials online to do this, but they're old and don't 100% work. So here's some quick steps on how you might sign your git commits with GPG keys stored on your Yubikey.

Since I'm a mac user, these steps are specifically for macOS, for Windows check out Scott Hanselman's great post here.

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Ivermectin

So you think Ivermectin works.

You studied the data, you've read all the medical studies you could find, you've seen hours of YouTube videos where doctors swear by the drug, and you've even spent days (or weeks) researching on your on. Finally you conclude, that the data suggest Ivermectin is an effective treatment against COVID-19.

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Missing .SO files in Lambda functions

Most of the time, adding a python package to a Lambda function is a simple task. You pip install to a directory, and then copy that directory to the function either directly or through a lambda layer.

But sometimes, there's extra work required.

Packages like opencv install additional files on your system that aren't available in the same directory you pip installed into. When you pip install opencv-python-headless, additional .so files are downloaded to special directories in your environment to provide the openCV functionality.

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Learning VIM over a Weekend

This weekend, I decided to learn me some Vim.

According to it's website, "Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to make creating and changing any kind of text very efficient" -- to be honest, I only used vim when forced to from the command line, I wasn't sure why anyone would choose to do 'serious' editing in Vim.

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The Future of work

As a father of 2 young children, I worry about how to prepare my children for the future of work. What will their careers look like? And am I preparing them the right way?

Amid the Pandemic, I look at hard-hit industries and imagine how different my career would be, had I been in one of those industries. Like being a pilot, at age 40, with years of experience -- living the high life in 2019, and looking desperately for a job in 2021.

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Lucking out on life

Luck Out: (colloquial, idiomatic, US, Canada) To experience great luck; to be extremely fortunate or lucky.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/luck_out

My life has been series of lucky breaks, a collection of events where I've 'failed upwards', and while my career isn't wildly successful, I'm smart enough to know and humble enough to realize the comforts I have are a distant hope for billions(!) of others on the planet.

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The very Last time

I've been experimenting with meditation over the last few months, and I think it's great. Next to having a disciplined 8 hours of sleep everyday, I think meditation is the best thing you can do for your personal mental health.

I first started by reading headspace, and trying out his 10-minute meditation technique, but now I'm on the WakingUp app, which again starts a pretty reasonable 10 minutes per day. I'm by no means a guru, but just like exercise, 10 minutes a day beat 0 minutes a day -- by a lot!

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Time vs. YouTube

I asked Emily, my 7 year old daughter, why she loved YouTube so much. Specifically, why she loved **watching** others play Roblox over actually **playing** Roblox herself?

It's a strange, but common thing among children her age, as my nephews and nieces do the same for other games.

No surprises then, that Google announced record profits yesterday, with YouTube alone bringing in more than $5 billion in advertising for the first time, gaining 32% over the same period last year.

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