Now that's what I call a Hacker

Originally written on a Russian website, Alex from JitBit Software has translated a hilarious post describing allegedly real scripts that do all varieties of things:

OK, so, our build engineer has left for another company. The dude was literally living inside the terminal. You know, that type of a guy who loves Vim, creates diagrams in Dot and writes wiki-posts in Markdown... If something - anything - requires more than 90 seconds of his time, he writes a script to automate that.

Here’s one gem:

hangover.sh - another cron-job that is set to specific dates. Sends automated emails like “not feeling well/gonna work from home” etc. Adds a random “reason” from another predefined array of strings. Fires if there are no interactive sessions on the server at 8:45am.

A GitHub project was started to recreate the scripts in a variety of languages.

Welcome Refugees

Canada’s government has published a page documenting our commitment to accept 25,000 additional refugees, as well as tracking the progress:

We want to make it easy for Canadians to stay updated as we welcome Syrian refugees. You can get regular updates on our key figures, highlighting the progress we are making through this initiative.

The government isn’t simply setting lofty goals and tracking progress, but has transparently laid out their plan of execution, which includes ensuring the safety of Canadians.

Like I said in a previous post, I truly am proud to be a Canadian.

First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy

Derek Sivers narrated over a short video (embedded below) to explain how a movement starts, and just how important the first follower is:

If you’ve learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let’s watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons...

Simple, but fascinating insights into how leadership and movements work.

From 1,000,000 to Graham’s Number

I have a small fascination with large numbers. One night when I was in university and should have been studying, I went on the search for the largest number. That search lead me to Graham’s number, and ever since I have been enamored with just how inconceivably large it is.

Tim Urban sums up Graham’s number perfectly, with the best attempt I’ve seen to present the magnitude of it

Huge numbers have always both tantalized me and given me nightmares, and until I learned about Graham’s number, I thought the biggest numbers a human could ever conceive of were things like “A googolplex to the googolplexth power,” which would blow my mind when I thought about it. But when I learned about Graham’s number, I realized that not only had I not scratched the surface of a truly huge number, I had been incapable of doing so—I didn’t have the tools. And now that I’ve gained those tools (and you will too today), a googolplex to the googolplexth power sounds like a kid saying “100 plus 100!” when asked to say the biggest number he could think of.

Telluride, Tim McGraw - Song of the Week

This is part of a weekly series where I share a song that I connected with in the past week. Send song suggestions to songoftheweek@colincwilliams.com. I post every Monday so you can enjoy the song over the course of the week.

When I was a child, I remember visiting my sister. She could drive, while I still had a number of years until I would get my license. Riding in her red Dodge Neon, Tim McGraw’s album Set This Circus Down was playing off of a CD. That car ride was when I discovered my love for country music.

Shortly thereafter I asked my Dad to burn a copy of the album so that I could listen on my own, and listen I did. The album quickly became my favorite, with one song that stood out from the rest: Telluride.

Over the years, Telluride has made times of joy more joyful, with it’s uplifting melody and talk of love. It has made times of sorrow easier to bear, reminding me to remember the good times and move on.

To this day Set This Circus Down is my favorite album, and Telluride my favorite song. I love them for the memories, music and lyrics.

Purchase this song:

• Amazon
• Google Play
• Groove Music
• iTunes

Meditation

This morning I meditated for the first time. I’ll talk about my experience more below, but for context I want to describe, from my perspective and knowledge, what meditation is and why I’m trying it.

Meditation is the act of focusing the mind.

It really is that simple. As you meditate, when you become distracted, you refocus your mind. What you focus on determines the purpose of the meditation. The simplest focus, breathing, results in deep relaxation of the mind and body. Your focus will be different, depending on your goal.

I now consider religious prayer a form of meditation. For Christians, the focus will be on their conversation and relationship with God. Other religions will focus on the deity or person that’s foremost to them. In the case of Buddhism, the way of life many Westerners associate with meditation, the focus is on self awakening.

My interest in meditation formed over time as I sporadically read about influential people in history. Many of them meditated each morning as part of the start to their day to give them focus and mental clarity. As I read further into what meditation is, I realized another significant benefit is reduced anxiety and stress. Since anxiety is a problem for me, I could always use more focus and clarity in life, and meditation is a no-risk activity, I figured it would be worth a try.

I followed meditation instructions for beginners, which draws focus purely to breathing and recommends a meditation period of 15 minutes.

The instructions were spot on with the amount of time it took for my mind to fully settle — I wouldn’t want to set the timer for less than 15 minutes. When I started, I was fixated on following the instructions to the letter. This ended up being a distraction in and of itself, over-emphasizing my breaths and preventing relaxing.

The longer I meditated, the more natural my breaths became. Deeper than normal, yet with out strain. My focus shifted from following the instructions to just breathing.

Numerous times through the meditation I felt my shoulders drop as they lost tension. By the end, my whole body felt truly relaxed. From head to toe, there was a significant drop in muscle tension and my mind was at ease.

The timer startled me when it went off — I need to find a softer tone — and brought me out of meditation. With that the distractions of the mind flooded back, but they felt a bit more distant and controlled. The result wasn’t revolutionary, but it was noticeable. My day has been more productive and my anxiety a little less, though that could be a coincidence.

Going into meditation I was skeptical that I would notice anything at all. Now I’m convinced that the experience is real. What I don’t know is whether I will continue meditating in the long term. The results were minor, but the moment of peace in an ever busier world is appreciated. Regardless, I will give it more time to see how it evolves for me.

Launching Mailchimp Popup on Click

When I added an email newsletter to this site, I wanted to have a link for readers to subscribe. I’m using MailChimpto send the emails and they provide a few options for the destination of that link:

1. Dedicated subscribe page, hosted by MailChimp.
2. Automatic inline popup, which appears a specified amount of time after arriving at the site.
3. An API to roll your own solution.

The first option works, but feels disconnected from the site.

The second option is a mixed bag. The popup is nicely designed and keeps the reader connected to the site by appearing over the page. It’s also evil by appearing automatically, and I wish MailChimp wouldn’t encourage this sort of behavior on the web.

The third option just requires work. I’m not willing to put in the time to make it look and feel as good as the MailChimp provided popup.

The second option was exactly what I wanted, except for it appearing automatically. So, I set out to use the pop-up that MailChimp provides, but have it only appear after a user has clicked a link. This way the reader’s experience isn’t interrupted.

A quick bit of searching online, and Stack Overflow had the answer (as always). Two new click handlers are required, but overall an easy fix.

See how it works by clicking the “Email” subscribe link in the sidebar.

Meet DeWalt's 12 Amp Grinder

Below I embedded a two-part, hour long grinder review. Why would I do that? Let me quote the video itself:

This is not going to be an over-fed salesman, bobble-head review where I plug it in and I grind some stuff and I tell you how great the thing is. Actually going to take it apart, see if the thing’s any good at all.

It doesn’t matter how much you care about grinders or metal, if you like mechanical details and being entertained you should watch this review.

Part A

Part B

Wooden Marble Toy Blocks

This series of videos is fascinating, showing the construction and iteration needed to create wooden blocks to guide marbles along a track. If you like woodworking, engineering and ingenuity, these are well worth the watch.

Here’s the first in the series to get you started:

iOS Tip: Force Quitting Apps

I was having an issue with the App Store on my iPhone and went in search of a solution. One possible solution called for force quitting the app, but in a way I had never heard of before:

...hold power until the slide to power off slider appears, then hold home until the app quits...

Lo and behold, it worked! This is something to try if you are having problems with an app and swiping it away in the app switcher isn’t working.