“The things you own end up owning you.” - Chuck Palahniuk.
I was minimalist. It was very easy and stress-free life. I did own many things but but only after careful planning and I was quick to sell things that didn’t meet my expectations or once I stopped using them.
I also used to live well below my means. I felt free because loss of job or any other financial crisis would not affect me much.
I had been using GitHub and Netlify for this site but lack of some features such as access to server logs finally got too much. So I decided to move this blog to my VPS.
One thing I really love about using Github is CI/CD and Github Actions. But I wanted something even simpler with less dependencies. So I decided to use a simple bash script to build and deploy the site.
It’s both intriguing and somewhat disheartening to observe how trading concepts often mirror human behavior. Here’s how:
Follow the Trend
In the investment world, the saying “past performance does not guarantee future results” is well-known. Despite this warning, many successful trend followers have found that stocks moving up generally continue to do so, and vice versa.
Interestingly, this concept applies to humans as well. Those who are happy and kind often continue in the same manner or even improve, while those who are miserable tend to spiral downward.
I love swimming but it is hard to swim for more than 30 mins, not because I get tired but because it gets boring.
I had been looking for headphones for swimming but almost of all them are essentially mp3 players. That is because Bluetooth doesn’t pass through water very well. You need to pre-load songs or mp3s. Which would be fine if you only care for music. But I am mostly listening to news or audiobooks. It seems like too much work to use those headphone for anything but music.
Community driven, articles, resources, guides, interview questions, quizzes for DevOps. Learn to become a modern DevOps engineer by following the steps, skills, resources and guides listed in this roadmap.
— Read on roadmap.sh/devops
In my view, horizontal spaces should be minimalist and vertical spaces can be maximalist. This way you will have a lot of horizontal space to sit at, write on. And walls covered in art to entertain you and also reducing echos and creating quieter space.
In our backyard lay a series of deck drains that perennially harbored standing water. Despite my best efforts, tracing the end of these drains proved to be an elusive task, seemingly due to the fact that it was compacted and buried beneath layers of earth.
I even ventured to employ a drain snake to address the issue, but the screws securing the drain covers were victims of rust, rendering them immovable.
The gut microbiome may be both helpful and harmful, and not only is it affected by diet, it has also been shown to affect mental health including personality, mood, anxiety and depression. In this clinical study we assessed dietary nutrient composition, mood, happiness, and the gut microbiome in ord …
— Read on pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36993403/
This was in 2011. More than 12 years ago. Still one of my favorite memory.
View from skydiving plane just before jumping Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas Skydiving in Dallas
I am a big fan of cheap VPSs. I start many personal projects, bring up a VPS, play around and then wipe it. Never have to worry about accidentally running up bill in 100s or 1000s of dollars. I run this blog on $4 server.
I think a lot of people would love to live their life as if they are on a permanent vacation. Before I was married, I didn’t make a lot of money but felt like that everyday was a vacation.
For me, vacation means:
Eating out/not cooking
Not cleaning
Spending time outside
Not working
Ready to travel
Eating out is cheaper than cooking, if you are not picky. I ate mostly fast food. Of course, it is not healthy but it is vacation. Also it is still better than overeating home-cooked meals.
Follow up to my last post, the people I admire the most are usually startup founders or business people. And then creators of open source softwares.
This weekend, I also met my engineer turned entrepreneur friend and saw Jobs movie. It seems I know what I should do.
I want a business that gives a lot of freedom, especially freedom to be with my kids. If I can involve kids in the business, it would be even better. Would love low stress business but it is not a requirement.
I am not sure if women experience midlife crisis but I know several men who have experienced or are still in middle of midlife crisis. I have a theory that every 20 years, men need a big change.
Usually, there is a big change in 20s, people are moving out of their parents’ homes, going to college or starting their careers.
And when people turn 60, they are getting ready to retire. Downsize their homes.
We just recently bought a beautiful single family home. Before this, we lived in a townhouse. And before townhouse, I have lived in apartments. Buying a townhouse was a big step but buying single family home is a whole new beast.
First, buying a house is probably a sound financial decision. There are plenty of articles and research that shows people who own homes are financially better off.
But very few people talk about negatives of homeownership. And I think because lack of that information, a lot of people make incorrect decisions and end up regretting their home purchase. I did. I had huge buyer’s remorse the day we moved into our new home. I am still getting over it.
There is a saying that we overestimate how much we can do in days but underestimate how much we can achieve in years.
Nothing makes a father as proud and happy as his children. My biggest guiding principle for my long term goals is to provide Ayden and Zayn an environment where they can grow to be happy and successful. Also it is important to realize that I cannot make anyone happy or successful. Only thing I can do is create an environment for them to grow in.
Just the other day, I happened to skim a blog post, “My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span.” It struck a chord, and I realized that I’m in the same boat. It’s been ages since I’ve properly read a book. Even when I have audiobooks on, I’m doing something else and hardly ever genuinely enjoy them.
I’ve got this habit too, of kicking off loads of projects and then ditching them once it’s time to roll up my sleeves and do the detailed work. Setting up a new project is a rush, but finishing something? That’s a snooze fest.
For example, let’s say one buys $500,000 single family home and rent it out for $3000 per month. Since it is investment property, they will need to make at least 20% down payment. On $400,000 loan, their monthly payment would be about $2750 at 3.25% interest rate, with $10,000 in property taxes per year and $2000 yearly insurance.
($36,000 - $33,000) / $100,000 = 0.03 or 3% return.
Teaching Children to Walk Independently! - One of the first reassurances I can give families is that Motor Milestones exist on a continuum. Each child achieves these skills at their own time, in their own way. Though we learn motor development from textbooks positing neurodevelopment theory to explain skill acquisition and motor patterning, the manifestation of this progression takes on distinct characteristics when we look at each child as a unique creation. - http://blog.dinopt.com/independent-walking-kids/
Scientists have also administered cognitive tests right after exercise—for example, measuring the flicker fusion threshold (the rate at which a flashing light begins to look like it’s steadily glowing) and found the same thing: After exercise, one’s senses are heightened and thus can detect the flashing at a higher frequency than before exercise.Taken together, these findings indicate that “people see more clearly and immediately after exercise,” Maddock says. “They can make finer visual distinctions; their perceptions are sharper.” - https://www.outsideonline.com/2186146/your-brain-exercise
Notably, most improvements in GI symptoms were maintained, and autism-related symptoms improved even more after the end of treatment. Important changes in gut microbiota at the end of treatment remained at follow-up, including significant increases in bacterial diversity and relative abundances of Bifidobacteria and Prevotella. Our observations demonstrate the long-term safety and efficacy of MTT as a potential therapy to treat children with ASD who have GI problems, and warrant a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in the future. - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-42183-0
Anything you can do to keep from packing up your shit and leaving is called love. - http://a.co/7cPPwc2
It is hard sometimes to keep in mind the growth-promoting potential of the mismatches between parent and child goals because the parents’ empathy for the child can make them feel as if it is their fault that they cannot fulfill the child’s wishes. - http://a.co/cbhTMiO
The basic premise of attachment theory is that toddlers can grow into happy and competent children if they can rely on at least one adult who makes them feel safe and protected. From this basic feeling of security in relationships grows the impetus to explore how things work in the world and to try out new skills. - http://a.co/1QjXVtb
Toddlers walk through life like we all wish we could: confident, demanding, and 100 percent positive that they are the center of the universe. - http://a.co/7nddWp3
It also appears that belonging to the London cluster made writers substantially more productive. Mitchell finds that the average writer in London saw their productivity go up by 12 percent. By comparison, writers in smaller clusters, in Dublin, Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge, saw no such gains. Furthermore, being part of the London cluster increased the likelihood of an author having their work published in any given year by 24 percent. - https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/06/british-irish-writers-london-clustering-dickens-woolf/590884/
Research led by the University of Exeter, published in Scientific Reports and funded by NIHR, found that people who spend at least 120 minutes in nature a week are significantly more likely to report good health and higher psychological wellbeing than those who don’t visit nature at all during an average week. However, no such benefits were found for people who visited natural settings such as town parks, woodlands, country parks and beaches for less than 120 minutes a week. - https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-06-hours-week-key-dose-nature.html
In May 2012 I made a commitment that changed my career: A simple task, completed every day, that skyrocketed my blog and allowed me to make over $30,000 in 6 weeks: https://nathanbarry.com/commitment-changed-career/
Vonnegut: Can you believe this guy? He makes more money in a single day than we’ll make in our entire lives. And you wrote Catch-22! > Heller: Sure, but I have something he’ll never have. > Vonnegut: Yeah, Joe? What’s that? > Heller: Enough: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20436934
The deliberate dog body language of curving is used in polite greetings, negotiation, or as a calming signal. A head-on, frontal approach can be seen as confrontational. The curving could be the curving of the dog’s body (which makes a slight c-shape), or a directional curve in the path the dog walks on approach. Some have described it as a ‘banana walk’, an easy descriptive way to imagine the direction of walk, due to the shape of the path taken by the dog.
— https://www.silentconversations.com/dog-body-language-curving-silent-conversations/
“The most important emotional accomplishment of the toddler years is reconciling the urge to become competent and self-reliant with the simultaneous and sometimes contradictory longing for parental love and protection.” — The Emotional Life of the Toddler by Alicia F. Lieberman - http://a.co/ahiuBee
“It is neither possible nor desirable to be always attuned and responsive to the moods and wishes of children.” — The Emotional Life of the Toddler by Alicia F. Lieberman - http://a.co/fwr0A4E
Most knowledge worth having comes from practice. It comes from doing. It comes from creating. Reading about the trade war with China doesn’t make you smarter—it gives you something to say at dinner parties. It gives you the illusion that you have the vaguest idea what is happening in our enormously complex world: https://tjcx.me/posts/consumption-distraction/
“but the often observed increased involvement of fathers in the toddler years may be linked to findings that fathers as a group are more likely than mothers to promote the adventurous exploration and challenging play that toddlers are now ready to join.” — The Emotional Life of the Toddler by Alicia F. Lieberman - http://a.co/89HPMXr
“One study, for example, found that children who showed a secure attachment to their fathers by seeking them out for comfort when feeling stressed had fewer behavior problems and showed more competence in school and peer groups than did those who had an insecure relationship with their fathers.” — The Emotional Life of the Toddler by Alicia F. Lieberman - http://a.co/5KTWPMl
Living cells in the human body experience forces of various frequencies (for example breathing, heartbeats, walking, running, jumping and singing), typically ranging from 0.2 hertz to hundreds of hertz," the researchers wrote. At the highest frequencies, cells became stiffer and the enzymes that guide gene transcription could not bind to the DNA, the team found.Cells’ immediate responsiveness to force makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, Wang said.“Cells must be able to respond quickly to things in their environment so they can survive,” he said. - https://phys.org/news/2020-04-physical-spurs-gene-reveals.html
An important point to note here is that automated trading does not mean it is free from human intervention. Automated trading has caused the focus of human intervention to shift from the process of trading to a more behind-the-scenes role, which involves devising newer alpha-seeking strategies on a regular basis: https://blog.quantinsti.com/learn-algorithmic-trading/
In this article we’ll look into a real options trading strategy, like the strategies that we code for clients. This one however is based on a system from a trading book. As mentioned before, options trading books often contain systems that really work – which can not be said about day trading or forex trading books. The system examined here is indeed able to produce profits. Which is not surprising, since it apparently never loses. But it is also obvious that its author has never backtested it: https://financial-hacker.com/algorithmic-options-trading-part-3/
If you’re considering algo trading as a career then be sure to talk to a lot of people doing it. I spent several years trying to break in to the industry at a few prop firms with only middling success. Here are my observations:1. The vast majority of firms only hire people with CS or math degrees from top 10 schools, with an MS being the minimum. There are few exceptions.2. Nobody is making as much money as they used to.3. Depending on what firm you end up at you will probably spend a lot less time building cool strategies and a lot more time trying to shave off a few microseconds here and there.4. Be prepared for a pretty rough work environment. Swearing, violent outbursts, people being secretive and not sharing ideas.5. If you’re lucky, management will be STEM people. If you’re not, they will be former floor traders who have managed to stay alive this long. - Ask HN: How do I get started with Algo trading? | Hacker News - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11332960
I write (program, paint, animate, market, and so on) computer games like this one1. The recent economic troubles haven’t effected me negatively that much, instead it’s been a positive thing as more people are home and playing more games. I don’t necessarily want to ‘profit’ from all the hardship around, but I’m glad to provide products that entertain and hopefully make the current situation a bit more bearable – that feels good.I got started over 10 years ago now, making Flash-based games and licensing them to various web portal and publishers, which was good money for a student back then! A little indie game developer golden age where you’d get a lot of players and also a few thousand dollars per game without too much trouble. I went on from there doing self-published games that anyone can buy on Steam or the Mac Store, both of which provide about 90% of my revenue, and the remaining 10% are from smaller stores and game distributors.1https://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zooke… <- My current project. - Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? | Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22858035
I was debating between PS5 and Quest 2 (Affiliate link), and yes it is like comparing apples and oranges, but in the end Quest 2 won. I will likely buy PS5 at some point though. But before I buy PS5, I need a new TV with 4K and HDR. It seems pointless to play PS5 on 1080p TV from early 2010s.
Quest 2 is not my first experience with Virtual Reality. I tried PSVR about 2-3 years ago but the mess of wires really turned me off with the idea of VR. When I found out that Quest 2 is completely wireless, I got interested in it again. I was not very excited about needing Facebook account to use it though.
Journey to the Microcosmos is a YouTube channel all about looking at microscopic organisms through microscope. Videos are beautifully produced and narrator explains what you are looking at in a calm soothing voice. These videos are educational and interesting. Highly recommended.
I moved all my blogs back to Hugo. I have gone back and forth between Wordpress and Hugo several times. WordPress makes it really easy to write and publish content. On this domain, I was using WordPress as a bookmarking service. With PressThis plugin, I was able to use a bookmarklet and publish a new post from any page on the web. But that plugin has not been updated in a while and it seems with every new WordPress release something would break. A few times, I was able to hack it to keep going. But lately, I cannot keep up with it. I will have to figure out a better way to bookmark but for now, I didn’t want to deal with WordPress. And easy bookmarking was the only reason why I was using WordPress.
This year I crossed off one of my bucket list item, got Open Water Diver certification. I had done scuba diving before at Honolulu. It is among my top 3 best experiences. Ever since that vacation, I had been wanting to get into diving more seriously.
But since we live in land locked Dallas, I didn’t think it was possible or worth it. Then this year in February I saw GroupOn from International Scuba and I decided to just go for it. I think GroupOn was for $250 but then there was a fine print which said we need to buy our own mask, fins, snorkel, and boots. I bought all this gear from International Scuba as they offered free gear rental for checkout dives. But this added about additional $200.
