Ask HN: What's your most interesting life goal currently?
Bonus points: What's some roadblocks or bottlenecks you've identified in the process?
Even more bonus points: Try to help someone else in the thread with their goals, especially clearing out those roadblocks and bottlenecks.
437 comments
[ 6.2 ms ] story [ 368 ms ] threadSince my last visit, laws have changed that require you to wear a helmet while on a moped. One of the things I enjoyed the most was the freedom in riding a moped around a huge crowded city for hours, not knowing where I was going, or where I'd end up. It's somewhat ruined now with the helmet law. Nearly 100 degree weather wearing a helmet isn't so fun.
Hopping on a moped and heading anywhere, parking anywhere really is quite enjoyable. It is unfortunate north american cities are not well suited to it.
Being from Toronto, the cold and snow are big deterrents. But safety is the biggest concern for me, even riding a bike in a bike lane is really dangerous. Cars don't look for you when making turns, they just go.
I was hit once cycling when someone made an abrupt right turn without signalling. My handlebar dug into the side of their van and somehow I was able to stay on my bike. They screeched to a halt and started yelling at me about how I hit them. They turned directly into me and I was in a bike lane!
Riding a scooter here feels so much safer - drivers are aware of them and are cautious at the appropriate times.
Safety... yeah, you're probably a bit safer than on a bicycle, but you have to watch out. The first night I had mine I hit some tram tracks and felt the back wheel skittering around, which was not a fun feeling. Kept it up, though.
I suggest you suck it up and wear one regardless of the heat if you either: use your head for a living, or just value your life.
Helmets seem to be all or nothing. If there is a law forcing them, 95% of people wear helmets. If there isn't, 95% of people don't wear a helmet.
You would expect people to carefully consider it and make a decision on their own. For some reason people can easily rationalize not wearing a helmet in two seconds and roll with that for years.
I'm not sure about that. The law in Delaware is that you must have a helmet on your motorcycle for each person on it (I guess they don't want there to be a monetary cost to wearing a helmet.), and it seems like the majority (2/3?) of people I see wear them, but definitely not all.
To some extent it comes down to culture/how aware people are. I think in America, at least half of people would wear them regardless (and in a lot of states, there's either no law requiring them, or the law only applies to new riders).
Sorry about your friend.
Also, this reminds me of a quip one of the SportsCenter anchors made back in the day: 'The NHL has made helmets optional. Injuries are also optional.'
see also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaP353v8JWY
The most obvious roadblock is making money along the way. My plan is to do it by launching a small web product, blogging about the travel, working as a local on countries where I'm allowed to, and doing some freelance programming work.
I have at least one year to save some money and get started working on these ideas. I'm sure it will not be easy, but I want give it a try :)
I'm building up my programming skills and saving up 2 year's worth of money (as well as paying off any outstanding debts) before embarking on this grand adventure.
by the way of advices, I guess I can only say just keep a tight lid on your wallet; spend it only on necessities, like food, shelter, and bills.
Since I could take a very long time to save two years worth of money, I'll just save enough to get started in some low-cost country (something like 3~5 months in South America or Asia) and focus on building something that can generate some passive income.
Thanks for the advices. Stick to it, and maybe we meet on the road :)
(1) Peace and quiet costs money. You may find it difficult to work if you stay anywhere that the backpacker crowd congregates.
(2) The longer you stay somewhere the cheaper it gets. An example from my experience - I spent a month in chaing mai in northern thailand where I rented an apartment. Per night it would have cost £18 if I was staying for a few days. Staying a month meant they gave me a tenancy agreement and it worked out as about £8 p/night plus electricity which was about £15 for the month.
You might want to try spending a few nights at different youth hostels in the city you intend to stay, then find an apartment for a month or two in the area you like the most.
(3) Food is both massively over-priced and pretty crap if you buy it in the hotel or nearby restaurants to where you are staying. Try and go further afield to eat where the locals do. Don't be put off by street food - it's good and cheap.
(4) Take plenty of time to just relax and go with the flow. try and put yourself out there and make friends. Avoid tourists attractions and guide books. I went to thailand intending to do exactly this but somehow didn't quite let myself go as much as I should have done. I've regretted it since.
Above all, actually go and do it. Most people who say they want to never really do.
I'm currently trying to build myself a money making web app that will allow me to get back on the road too. Good luck :)
It was fun, but it was difficult to live cheaply and work in a quiet place.
building a webapp will probably take you longer - getting the word out can be tough, and growth can be slow. but ultimately it's more scalable - you'll be earning money (in theory) while you're out exploring your new surroundings.
some quick tips from my experience: * rent an apt with good broadband. it's worth it to be able to plug in from your home to work instead of tracking down a close, open cafe with reliable broadband. hostels are noisy.
* buy icebreaker clothing - expensive but totally worth it. they don't smell. i've had the same 5 t-shirts for the past 2.5 years. merino wool is the best fabric known to the digital nomad.
* pay off your debt before you leave. it gives you flexibility and cuts down on stress.
* don't take more than a carry-on. you can always buy stuff at your destination.
* make time to see the region of the world you're staying in. i found it hard to balance this with enjoying the city where i'm living.
* enjoy the solitude and be selfish with your time. you'll probably have no obligations to anyone when you move somewhere. relish this - ultimate control over your time is a true luxury. use it wisely (see next bullet)
* before moving somewhere, figure out what you want to do there (learn the language? meet locals? go heads-down on a webapp? see the country? etc). then focus on the things you want to do knowing you're not trying to do it all. you can always come back.
* don't forget to improvise, deviate from your schedule / goals, jump on opportunities that come up, and go with the flow.
so excited for you - you're going to have a phenomenal time! drop me a line if you have any questions - blog at reemer dot com.
Difficult, but I assume interesting.
Step 1: sit back and relax ;)
A friend of mine is having a difficult time convincing his parents and hers that he has found his own partner - even though they would be very suitable candidates for an arranged marriage.
Indians do not marry for love. Love is what happens afterwards.
1) Accept the person that you are, and learn to love that person. If you don't accept who you are and love yourself, others will have a hard time following suit.
2) Do the things you love. In doing so, you're likely to meet others who share the same interests.
3) Stop worrying about whether you'll ever find someone. When you do this, you project a sense of desperation, and others can pick up on this.
Also, why the tight time frame? You don't get married to become happy, you get married because you're already happy.
On a more practical level, try OkCupid.com. Seriously, I've been so impressed with that site. If match.com is like myspace, okcupid.com is like facebook. High quality, smart people. The girls actually write you back. I'm averaging about 2 dates a month from OkCupid right now.
Also, the site is just a well designed and fun web app, so I can appreciate it on that level.
I haven't used any other dating sites, so I have no proper basis for comparison, but I've been very satisfied with the site, from matching system, search options, etc.
Bottom line: I ended up meeting my current girlfriend there and things are going very, very well with her. Anecdotal evidence, yes, but I hope it complements the nuggets of awesomeness you'll find on OKTrends (http://blog.okcupid.com).
"Optimizing your wife
If a man can expect to meet exactly N eligible women in his life, what strategy should he use to maximize his chances of choosing the very best one?"
http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath018/kmath018.htm
Just curious, are you attempting to quantitatively rank the candidates in a spreadsheet, especially the intangibles like 'as potential mother'?
As a result, neither egocentrical males nor lesbians can bear children by themselves, even though artificial insemination and foster mothers may make it easy to live in the illusion that it's a possibility. (Or were you implying that the backward model of gender roles that is expressed in "carry my child" would be sure to drive any sane woman away unless the OP is a lesbian woman, because lesbian women can get away with chauvinistic opinions without raising any red flags?)
On the other hand, yes, his or her wife may be perfectly able to carry his or her existing child around if he or she is a single parent with a sore back.
It would be difficult to find one who would agree to this arrangement, though.
So lesbians can certainly bear children by themselves, but men, the vast majority of which have no wombs, cannot.
Citation: #3 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bear
And while you may consider yourself witty, I feel I must point out that in the context in which I was using it, "to carry" a child refers to the state of being pregnant with it. Citation: #6 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/carry Yet again, something the wombless may have trouble with.
As opposed to that, the mindset of getting a partner for the sole purpose of having a family, while certainly more often found with those with non-womb reproductive organs, can probably be found with both males and females and in either case is sure to be appalling to the partner (or to other people at large).
While I strongly agree with your basic point, I'm not sure I like the way you make that point.
In my understanding, both the OP and yourself implicitly talk about the whole parenting affair and not just getting pregnant with a child, at which point the social faculty of being a good parent becomes more relevant compared to biological disposition.
Show me a man starting a family with a 40 year old, and I will show you a man without options.
Well, somebody's been reading his Roissy.
Assuming that women and men are the same, have the same goals, and obey the same rules is an immensely stupid mistake to make, one that could be avoided by observing the real world social dynamics, and one that only clueless feminists such as yourself make.
Such as if you are White I suggest a good looking Indian girl who is pursuing PhD in CS or some such
At the same time you must look out for IQ and Looks which are quite a bit genetically dependant
Any evidence for this? (Once you get past marrying siblings and maybe cousins?)
1. Budget. I know it sucks, and I know it is a hassle, still, no way around it. Grab excel or numbers or openOffice and do it start of each month.
2. Split accounts I have used this technique to great success. - 1st account is the "INCOMING" account, This is where all incoming money goes to and all fixed costs (see 1. Budget) go away from. - 2nd account is a "pocket money" account. Pocket money is transferred there. Nice about this: You can spend ALL of this and your bills and food are still paid. - 3rd account is a savings account. Not much to explain here. Make sure to save a good amount.
3. Keep at it
4. Get a seperate wallet for "food and household". I usually get a laugh about this, as it was something our parents used to do. Still, I withdraw cash beginning of the month and pay my groceries from this. Works wonders.
5. Keep at it
6. Use a big chunk from your savings account to remove all remaining debt at once.
7. Enjoy freedom.
I know people will go on about "credit history", "credit rating", etc... However, I plan to nev er go there again.
Best, ::captaink::
The other practice I want to get in the habit of is telling my self that I can only spend money if I have earned it from doing extra work, be it web design, cutting a hedge etc. That should motivate me to get out and about to earn extra on the side.
Its going to be very tough thats for sure, then again some of the happiest times of my life have been when ive been broke.
My old roommate spent a few weeks hitching around Japan and loved it. He had no trouble at all, and the people were all really nice.
You might want to read Hokkaido Highway Blues if you haven't yet.
* Time. Or if time = money then I need money to be able to spend time on this. Also, in itself this wouldn't bring in much income I don't think.
* No CS background. Don't know where to start.
1) Natural Language Understanding - James Allen 2) Speech and Natural Language Processing - Jurafsky & Martin 3) Statistical Foundations of Natural Language Processing - Manning
You can brush up your probability and Linear Algebra from the prep guides available from Andrew Ng's machine learning course. My best wishes.
peter at pchristensen dot com
Now I'm not sure the best way to go about this, either learn the abstract concepts which might not be the best way to start or pickup one of the more pure languages which in turn will teach you concepts when you learn how they are implemented in the language.
But, I think the best thing we did that actually worked---which we always had been reluctant to trying---was to leave him running around the house butt-naked. The whole apartment has carpet.
Fun times.
Your kid is likely simply past that sensitive period.
Early on you put the child on the potty when they have a high likelihood of needing to pee/poop. You keep a potty nearby, put them on it 10 times a day and make it fun: read books while they sit on it. He learned to associate peeing/pooping with the potty very quickly. After 3 months or so he will now generally wait for the potty. He has his little routine and my wife knows the general times he needs to go and puts him on the pot. He only uses a diaper when in the car or sometimes at night.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that EC/Diaper Free Baby suggest the reason babies commonly pee on you when you remove their diaper is that it goes against their instinct to soil themselves in their diaper. When you remove it, its time to go! The argument is that a baby who is afforded the opportunity to learn to use the potty quickly will be happier. My son is very happy to use the pot. In fact he is sitting on it right now :)
http://www.challenge.co/
Current roadblock is that I'm just not doing it enough. I get distracted by other interests of mine. I was previously practising 3 times a week (which probably still isn't enough) but lately I'm only going once a week.
Please read this article by the Unlikely Salsero:
http://www.unlikelysalsero.com/2007/08/magic-of-time-last-on...
The whole idea of going from canned set routines to dancing to the music is a bit of difficult hack that I'm still working on (but making progress). The hack for that I think is understand the structure of the song - (real-time Fourier analysis of a set of eight measures of 8-beats each..with your feet)
I had an excellent teacher in Thunder Bay, but just moved to Toronto a month ago to be in a more tech savvy town (I'm a developer) and am having difficulty finding a dojang that I like and that gives attention to nurturing their lower color belts.
I understand the need to learn the basics just wondering if you found this time a drag at all or it was all interesting and I'd have nothing to worry about?
Plus most classes will mix up the basics with other stuff like forms and different kinds of sparring, so you won't spend the whole time doing repetitive exercises.
I also recommend finding a school that does multiple form of martial arts. Not only can you attend a variety of classes, a lot of masters will incorporate aspects of the other martial arts into each other for a more rounded course. Right off the bat we learned basic technique, self defence moves, patterns and traditional movements such as one step sparring.
If you show an interest and find a good school, there's absolutely nothing to be worried about on the boredom front.
You tell them apart by their attitude toward training (patient, calm, focused) and their mastery of the basics (accurate targeting, completely relaxed body, powerful delivery).
One thing I've enjoyed in martial arts training is that taste grows faster than ability - which means that subjectively you get worse the more you practice. To compensate, training teaches you to be more patient with yourself - when we screw something up, we just do it again, there's no need to say anything or get annoyed.
Attitude is the biggest thing to focus on in the early grades (the technical stuff can only be learnt by repetition, so it's not that hard - just repeat). I don't think it's a drag at all.
Roadblocks: Lack of self-discipline and commitment (day job providing good money)
One thing I'm starting to do, since I also have a day job, is going to the library for my lunch break (I eat lunch real fast right before I go) which is luckily a few blocks away, with and laptop loaded with Ubuntu to force myself to do some more lisping.
Once I get in the habit I'll be able to work on harder challenges and hopefully become a better programmer.
Also, it might seem that your lack of discipline and commitment comes from complacency due to the day job, but in my case, after being laid-off, I found myself procrastinating just as much (I got all day now right?) so be careful about making any sudden moves in that area.
Another aspect I guess is to get more involved in the Melbourne startup/ coworking community, only had limited contact thus far in what seems to be quiet a large and vibrant scene.
http://trickstutorials.com
http://duriansoftware.com/joe/An-intro-to-modern-OpenGL.-Tab...
Also:
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596804831
And then personally I've found this to be the clearest theory:
http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice-...
A lot of deserving folks without an online voice struggle to put the word out when in need (An urgent need for blood, a sudden need for funds for a critical operation). I'm thinking we can tap into influentials to help spread the word (who can earn karma in return).
Bottleneck: As step 1 in this project, I've launched http://www.saveaplusk.org , but ironically it's suffering from the very same problem I want to solve - I have too small a voice to get the word out.
Whatever size voice you might have, it is louder when you use it locally. Are you and your friends using it to help people? Are the people then helped not willing to try it?
I can’t see your site from my current location but with local and modest goals you might be surprised who the influentials are and what karma they might really want.
But I'm not going to give this up so easily - i will give it my sincerest shot. I guess the hard part's figuring out what works and what doesn't.
Bottleneck: My boring day job, which is needed because I have a family to support.
I happily talk about this with you. My email is:
nadam60 at gmail dot com
Road Block(s): No packaged trips to do this, no network with marine biologists/researchers who own the subs
and i usually stay the night. 2 or 3 times that i've been there, i see massive bioluminecents in the water. not sure exacly what causes it. but in the middle of the night ill go into the ocean and spash and its the brightest purple you've ever seen. like when you hit the water it 'activates' something and explodes with color.
anyway. i do have the internet right here. should probably look that up. its amazing.
The biggest problem at the moment is finding the time to train. Ideally I would like to be out everyday but I can only manage 4 days a week. Each training run is lasting upto 2.5 hours and finding that time each day is tough.
The rest is fun and massively rewarding. As I get fitter I need less sleep and I feel much stronger - both physically and mentally.
The only way to find more time to run is to sleep less which is obviously bad.
I've never tried the ice bath, ibuprofen and recovery but I've certainly had beer. Thanks for your advice.
I was just at a friend's wedding last weekend, am engaged myself, and four other friend pairs are also engaged. In all of these cases, we discussed marriage extensively with our partners before anyone was officially asked. We all knew what the answer was going to be.
If you want to consider going to the next step, you should bring up marriage casually in conversation. If she sounds like she's just not into it, she's either going to say no, or say yes because of pressure when she doesn't really mean it.
I recently asked my very excellent girlfriend of 5 years said question. I procrastinated so long at least partially due to residual trauma from an early parental divorce (plus the subsequent decades of court battles and screaming).
My fiancee's approach was a combination of patience and understanding for 4 years, then basically telling me my time was up. The latter strategy wouldn't have worked without the former.
One thing I'm certainly glad we did is to talk about it honestly and deeply before taking the plunge. I doubt I would have been able to work up the courage to do it otherwise.
If marriage is important to you, tell her so, and give you reasons why.