computerjunkie

[0] https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/home

[1] http://www.scotsman.com/business/markets-economy/bill-jamies...

They have mentioned that Vanguard will be looking to give access to Europe in 2018.

[Edit] - Removed Financial Times link as they have a paywall.

My mother had to provide for a family on her own. Most of the relatives from my father's side didn't bother to help, they had their own problems to deal with, add all of this on top of a economy which was non-existent in 2008. We had no place to stay for 4 months because we couldn't afford rent. I couldn't watch shows my peers watched because we couldn't afford cable/satellite TV, let alone a place to stay. There was food, electricity and water shortage for years(still is). Inflation was so high the government had to discontinue the currency.

Teachers in my public school began to flee to other countries so that they could still provide for their family.I had to teach myself Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Mathematics.I took up subjects I was never assigned to do in order to get decent grades so that I could go to college. I had to do two A levels, instead of three because teachers thought my grades weren't good enough, other students made fun of me because of this.The environment I was in was a perfect recipe for disaster, for a young mind.

But here I am, with a degree in Computer Science and working for a software company with like minded people because my father bought and introduced to me a cream rectangular box, big monochrome monitor and taught me how to type with a keyboard at the age of 5. This machine would become my identity project. Computers have been my survival tool, my passion, even when my peers thought I was delusional for pursing a career in Technology(they even made fun of me for thinking I had a chance).

Environment plays a big part in your life but you have the choice to let it dictate your life or you take the wheel and determine your future. I could have given up but I chose not to, even though everything around me constantly said I should.

I'm not in a place where I can say I made it but, but its sure as hell better than what I have experienced in my late childhood and adolescent years. For those young folks that are reading this and are in somewhat a disadvantaged situation, stay positive,stick to your identity project and never give up!

I cannot count the amount of times I have experienced this phenomena. A couple of years ago, when I first got an android phone, I remember someone say "Ha, you don't have an iPhone, your poor!"... the content of the comment didn't really disturb me, what did was the reasoning which lead the person to generate such a perspective.

I've been using Thunderbird because I simply cannot find an email client that provide that much functionally, respects your privacy and doesn't randomly break.

But there is email client that I am looking forward to called [0]mailpile, that I will probably switch to once its reached v1.0 (early October)

[0] https://www.mailpile.is/

So don't sweat it. Keep on walking and enjoy life!

Sleep is something which is seriously overlooked in general. From personal experience, getting enough sleep and eating well are requirements that need to be met first before exercise.

There is nothing is worse than exercising whilst you are deprived of sleep and mal-nourished.

Speaking about exercise, don't get hung up on dogmas and "this is the only way" personality that is common in the fitness industry. Pick what works for you. Just make sure you are moving on a daily basis because sitting down 8 hours everyday is not healthy at all.

Go for long walks in the park with family or friends. As silly as it sounds, it works. Walking is not only good for you physically, but also psychologically [0]. Walking is a basic human movement pattern and is one of the first things we learn how to do early in our lives.

My grandfather passed away at 94 two years ago from old age. He never went to the gym, never participated in long marathons and he was a frequent beer drinker. But he did long walks everyday on the farm in the morning and evenings, he also ate well and by 10pm he was in bed.

Morale of the story is that, go back to the basics and stick to them. You won't go wrong.

Edit: Added a reference.

[0] http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/april/walking-vs-sitting-...

Privacy was not the major contributing factor of me stopping the usage of facebook, but how "nosy" I felt in other peoples lives when I don't even talk to them. The more I used facebook the more alone I felt.

Another issue was the cluttered feel to it. The addition of a twitter clone feed made everything feel like an "all-in-one" solution.

After going on a month long without Facebook, whenever I met my colleages, I would have a lot more to say to them and genuinely ask questions about whats going on in their lives. I default alot less to my phone after I meet with friends.

The majority of the population never speak about the "bad" things happening in their lives, because it makes you vulnerable which is a feeling we refuse to show in todays world.

But judging from the way some domestic animals are treated by some farms, the ick/ew factor of eating insects becomes less of a barrier.

It might be a novelty right now in the western world but its been years of tradition in African or Asian countries.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonimbrasia_belina

Agreed.

This article resonates with me so much. I don't know if every other self taught developer goes/went through this, but its truly annoying.

Its so easy to get caught up in a another_new_JavaScript_framework.js or front end framework, but if you look back you begin to see that you wasted time focusing on the trendy things (author mentions he does this).HN, Techcrunch, Github, Bloggers and other resources all influence us with these shiny things. Sooner or later, priorities will change and you will begin to make rational decisions on how you spend your time.

I only realised this when I started working a couple of weeks ago at this temporary gig. You soon realise that there are not a lot of hours in the day to use all the shiny things you want.

I've come to the point where I have stopped looking at the shiny new things and started focusing on a small set of tools for job at hand.Tools that have been proven to work, and will continue to work regardless of what is currently trending.

Rather than learn 3-4 tutorials about a languages syntax for months, pick one comprehensive but concise tutorial on the language and straight after that start a small project in it and stick to it till its finished. Programming languages (or domain tools) in general all have similar concepts. If you learn python, then ruby or other interpreted languages should be easy to understand.If you learn Photoshop, then Gimp or other image manipulation software should be easy to understand and grasp. Understand the concepts, not the tool.

Pick a technology you are comfortable with and make stuff. Because at the end of the day, your average Twitter, Instagram, Facebook user doesn't even know(or care) if Scala, Python or PHP is scalable and if the application used best design patterns. All what matters to them is the content, likes, shares, comments et. al.

A couple of articles I found truly eyeopening on my journey in software development in general;

1. http://blog.codinghorror.com/php-sucks-but-it-doesnt-matter/

2. http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/

The transition from plastic to glass isn't that hard at all, you just have to be slightly more careful when it comes to carrying one. Simply throwing the bottle across the room to somebody becomes dangerous as compared to throwing a plastic water bottle.

This year I'll be moving to storing my leftover food in glass jars, [0] le parfait do really good ones (they are expensive but worth it in my opinion). I'm still figuring out how I will store frozen meat I get from the farm.

[0] http://www.leparfait.com/

Offline access would be an awesome feature, especially for users who are not "always connected".

I already do avoid news sites and news papers when possible, thanks for the advice and the extension recommendation

A bit off topic: Ive asked myself this question in general for the past couple of months. People dying from wars and incidents that happened a couple of days ago makes me anxious, miserable, lost and helpless.Maybe its media amplifying everything, I don't know but its truly unpleasant.

This. I would gladly tick the check box for some honest feedback. I personally think that leaving candidates with a generic response is unprofessional and says plenty about the company.

Will you be satisfied that you never got any feedback to why it was refused, what you did wrong and what to do to fix it?

Feedback, be it good or bad is crucial. I, myself appreciate this feedback, especially in this scenario the author is talking about. How am I supposed to improve my self when I don't even know what I am doing wrong?

1. "My client is a leading company in x..."(does the client have a name?)

2. "My client is looking for university graduates from a top 20 university..."(so because I didn't go to Harvard/MIT/Oxford/Cambridge et.al you wont consider my application)

3. "Fast paced environment which is constantly changing..."(this company sounds like a confused sweatshop which decides to chose another technology because they hit technical debt.)

4. Experience in C/Haskell/Python/Java/C#/F#/Clojure/Lisp/Erlang/Rust/GO/Ruby/Assembly/Forth/Brainfuck...(Signs of a dodgy recruiter)

5. "Github account a must and you should have a contributing history to opensource"...(I use open source, I'm a huge fan of it, but because I didn't contribute to it means I can't get a job? Clearly this recruiter is following media trends. And what if I don't want a Github account, with what happened a couple of days ago[0] I would be pretty concerned about having one(though awesome work for getting the message out Github, other companies would just keep quiet and hope nobody notices))

6. Graduate with 2 years of commercial experience(I just finished university when I "learn" hoping to get that experience which you are asking for.)

I could probably write a blog post. I probably will when I get the energy. HR is a dodgy industry which doesn't know a lot about each of the sector it works with.

[0] http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/12/critical-git-bug-all...

- Developed a prototype eCommerce website (not live yet) In PHP(CodeIgniter) for my final year project. (Which I am currently working on porting to Django)

- Deployed a website (Actually took a lot more time than I thought it would.)

- Finally took a break and went on vacation with 10-20% of good online availability for 2 months.

- Lost 11 kilograms (24.25 pounds), although I think it was mostly due to final year stress.

- Attended https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/, my first ever technology focused meetup/job fair.

- Started watching my first anime(Naruto) after overhearing conversations from my friends about how good it is.I finally understand why they enjoy it.

I still do go to the gym but walking is somewhat my meditation. Congrats on losing 50+ lbs, keep pushing and going. The secret(or what I like to call common sense) is consistency which in turn becomes habit. Keep on walking for the next 3 years or so and try stop for a week. You will actually miss walking because your body is used to it now.

I totally agree. Everything is sold as a "quick fix", add this and your life will be 10x better, do this quick hack...et.al.

The most important thing I found about life in general (or diets/health) is to be specific is habit. Don't sway to a different diet if it doesn't work after X weeks. And don't do silly diets that encourage too much of one thing and too little of another.