¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

Disclaimer: I haven’t reviewed this post. It was written in one shot. I hope it is understandable.

This is possibly the last post from me on this platform. However, I’ve said that a thousand times before. I’ve tried many platforms: Google Sites, Jekyll, nanoc, and Octopress.

Last year I wrote a similar post. Now, here I will register some small changes, tidbits, and bits I’ve learned and discovered this year. I won’t create links—just pure text.

The actual post #

Detailing everything would be tough, so I present this as lists, trying to be chronologically organized and reasonably brief.

Campus Party #

This was my first great event. In particular:

• I participated in a hackathon for the first time. It was from Mozilla, and my code is on GitHub in the “Riddlefox” repository. It’s a riddle game for Firefox OS.
• I participated in my first Capture the Flag (CTF) competition, without knowing it was a CTF. Promoted by CERT.br, I won a Kindle Paperwhite 2, ending in second place. Today, the Kindle is one of the devices I use most.
• I opened my eyes to communities thanks to open source communities at this event. Today, I’m an active member of the Arch Linux community.
• I opened my eyes to web development. I’m not a super fan yet, but it’s on my planning list.

Arch Linux #

I was searching for a community to settle on for two years. The Arch Linux community is perfect for me. I learned:

• Communities
• MediaWiki syntax/style
• IRC for open source projects
• The importance of the command line
• The importance of “do it yourself” and not feeding help vampires
• Sometimes user-centered > user-friendly
• The feeling of knowing intelligent people and becoming more intelligent with them
• Tiling window managers are awesome (currently using i3)
• Mailing lists

Programming languages #

One of my goals this year. Languages I learned include, in order: emacs lisp, cmake, golang, javascript/node.js, ruby, haskell, Matlab, and R.

The most important things are the paradigms:

• Haskell: functional programming
• Golang: systems programming
• Ruby: dynamic programming

My goal for next year is more depth-first than breadth-first. I want to improve my knowledge in some of these languages, probably digging deeper on Haskell.

MOOCs #

I became more interested in them month by month. Coursera is my preferred platform, though I learned to like edx. The best MOOC this year was on Functional Programming using Haskell, conducted by Erik Meijer.

Presentations #

LaTeX + beamer became my de facto standard. For collaborative editing, Google Docs/Slides continues to be the best. LyX is my preferred tool.

Books and reading #

This year was great. My Goodreads profile tells me I read 50 books this year, almost double from last year (26 books). Most were technical.

• I can’t live without Goodreads anymore.
• You don’t need to buy books on Amazon for a Kindle. I’ve never bought one. Epub and mobi are the best formats.
• I can’t live without Calibre anymore.

Operating systems #

I learned more about FreeBSD, grml (a nice distro for system administrators), and other Linux distros. Now I try to say Unix and *nix instead of just Linux.

Docker and containers are simply amazing. They will be the future. I also played with filesystems like btrfs and xfs.

Games #

Not a great year for games. The only one worth playing was Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction. Kongregate is slowly dying.

Music #

Spotify was my best discovery of the year. I’m trying to listen to different music genres. I also discovered blockify for blocking audio ads on Spotify (though I don’t recommend it—Spotify is a great service offered for free).

The podcasts I most like is Bad Voltage (presented by Jono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke and Stuart Landridge).

Computer graphics #

I created a game (repository “cg-sokoban”) and developed a ray-tracer. OpenGL wasn’t the most exciting thing I learned, but I got interested in game engines and image processing/computer vision.

Vim and Emacs #

The epic battle continues. I switched to vim for most daily text editing needs this year. However, I’m not done with emacs. My personal rule: if your editing task takes less than an hour, vim is better; otherwise emacs is better.

Hackathons #

I participated in my first hackathon with a team; my team got best place in a specific category (HackPuc).

Android #

I learned tricks to optimize it. I have the same device (Motorola Razr I) for almost 2 years, and it’s still fast. Root is necessary for maintenance.

Privacy #

Privacy becomes a concern more and more. I became an adopter of OpenPGP and I’m trying to move away from the Gmail web client. I’m using msmtp for sending emails, but I still need a more complete stack.

Social networks #

Facebook is becoming deprecated. My news feed is blocked from the web. Most of my contacts are boring, narcissistic, and futile.

• Twitter: Better as a news feed than Facebook, though I never interacted with most people I follow.
• Tumblr: Now using it for sharing links instead of Facebook.
• Flickr: My preferred place for photos. Flickr is the best place for sharing photos, though this may change.
• Reddit and Hacker News: Still the best sources of serendipity I know.
• RSS feeds: Using Inoreader now. XKCD is probably the best RSS feed.

Podcasts #

This year was huge for podcasts. I have 47 podcast feeds, a ridiculous number. I listen regularly to ~15 of them. I’m adapting to listening at 2x speed. Some I listen at 2.5x.

Languages #

One of the best things I did was write in this blog in English. This improved much the way I think in English. What’s next? I’m thinking about studying French or German.

Orgmode #

The best TODO/agenda/organizer I discovered. Both for discipline and structuring your thoughts and plans.

The future starts with you #

This was probably the largest post I written in this blog. I’m pretty satisfied. I covered most of the things I thought. I haven’t talked about everything—programming contests, hackergroup, bookmarks, dotfiles, repositories, what I hated and loved to learn, professors, and the GPA system.

In this year, more than halfway through my college degree, several things became clear about my next steps. The next year I’ll probably study more computer graphics, computer networks, programming languages, and algorithms.

What is the future of this place? I don’t know. However, I tried to stop several times. This means something. I’m not 100% comfortable with using Wordpress. I’m getting bored of this format/style.

For all of this, I’m migrating to https://thiagowfx.github.io/archive. I’ll change the way I post too. If you follow by RSS, keep it in your feed list for a while until the new blog gets its own feed. The best way to get in touch with me is by following me on Twitter (@thiagowfx).

I wish you a good New Year. Let’s move on.

Observation: I’m on vacation. I’m open to study groups or business. If you want to study something with me or want me to work for you, this is a nice moment.