Learning to solder at a hackerspace

November 6, 2011

Just got back from a great afternoon spent at Tog in Dublin. Tog is a hackerspace. I noticed that they were doing a beginner’s electronics workshop and since I have always wanted to be able to assemble circuits but never could, I signed up immediately. A quick email was all that was required to book [...]

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What are you reading? First Edition

October 17, 2011

My wife is a cinema fan and goes more often than I do. She has a great habit which I’m going to try and emulate, she makes a note of every film that she sees in the cinema and at the end of each year chooses a top 5. Instead I want to record what [...]

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Instead of wasting time, take a walk

October 14, 2011

I was parked in my usual position in front of my computer today trying to install a plugin on a site. It turns out that it’s not compatible with the latest version of wordpress, so I had to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to install a standalone version on the [...]

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Testing the Market

October 3, 2011

In my Hungry Gardener post I talked about having all the necessary tools for starting but not actually planting anything. There’s another risk in my current mindset. I dream about big projects / websites / products that are useful and make a lot of money, but I don’t know the people who would pay for [...]

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How long it takes to write a blog post

September 23, 2011

I’m not sure if the quality of posts chez Declan has actually gone up but I’m definitely spending more time on my writing and enjoying the process a lot more. In the past I abandoned so many posts because I felt they “just weren’t coming together” but in truth I hadn’t spent enough time on [...]

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Tenacity API

September 19, 2011

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle Getting good at something takes practise, whether it’s coding, learning Japanese, eating or playing the piano. Improving at anything takes consistent practise and that’s hard to maintain. Jerry Seinfeld was asked by a young comic how to improve [...]

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The Hungry Gardener

September 6, 2011

There’s a series of ads on TV that feature a visual metaphor for something to do with finance. An egg-timer to represent a mortgage and sand in the timer to represent the repayments. That kind of thing. I don’t remember what company or product the ad is for but the reason they have stuck in [...]

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Sprints for game creators and playing in the browser

September 2, 2011

From Hacker News: A group of game developers who are doing a 14 day sprint for charity to create a complete game. http://www.bigblockgames.com/blog/coffeesprint/ 14 whole days? Pfft Ludum Dare Invites developers to create a working game in 48 hours Notch, of Minecraft fame created Prelude of the Chambered over the weekend and recorded most of his [...]

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Learn Python the hard way

September 2, 2011

Learning something the hard way is not something that normally attracts me. I’d much prefer to see an easy way or a quick way. I had seen Learn Python the Hard Way recommended over and over again when I first thought about learning python. I imagined a series of difficult exercises that would force you [...]

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Working at home and cabin fever

August 19, 2011

It’s fantastic to work from home make your own hours. I also find it really difficult to manage my time and stay productive.   If you want something done, give it to a busy person. I’ve got all the time in the world and I find myself wasting it. Reading The Now Habit has given [...]

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