I started skateboarding two years ago in my backyard and this year I started skating at my local skatepark. I'm all padded up for safety and even use hip pads. It's a very fun and cheap hobby. Seeing a lot of progression so it's very fun.
Such a great sport - got back into it several years ago, and while I haven't progressed all that much (I'm more of a roll around parks guy than a pop an amazing trick guy), I do enjoy it immensely
Hover's parent company is Tucows, listed in the parent article as being the third largest "domain holder".
I started using Hover/Tucows back when they were Domain Direct, as I liked the idea of using a Canadian-based registrar. Hover has been great. I've rarely needed to contact Hover support but they've always been responsive and helpful.
The book “The Non-Designers Design Book” is very good. This is where the acronym CRAP comes from, which is Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity.
I use bear.app and love the simplicity but is versatile enough to all my uses cases. It only runs on Apple platforms, so maybe a deal breaker. It seems similar to Obsidian, so maybe another deal breaker. It syncs via CloudKit and for what it's worth, the devs have shared that they are working on a web app version that would presumably use CloudKit Web Services.
For some people (myself included) Game/TV addiction is a real problem and can have drastic affects on ones life. (It did for me throughout my 20s/30s). For others it doesn't seem to have negative side effects.
My life was held back by time spent gaming for so long and later in life I realized TV was doing the same. Moderation in all things right? For me it is easier to cut them out period.
I'm happier and have a far more productive life as a result. I'm now in my 40s and have productive life and career but this didn't start until my mid 30s.
Addiction is fascinating because the distribution of outcomes is so broad across users. Damn near anything can be life-debilitatingly addictive to some segment of people while others can consume it with absolutely no problems.
Psychology obviously can't always be simplified, but I think a key component underlying when consumption goes in a bad direction is why someone is using.
If you're playing videogames because your life is otherwise fine and you want to sprinkle some leisure on top, it's fine. Hell, you can play for hours a day and it's not really a problem if you're content with the time spent.
But if you're playing videogames as an avoidance strategy for underlying psychological problems, then you're setting yourself up for addiction. Because avoidance tends to cause those problems to grow. You aren't working on them, and seeing yourself avoid them subconsciously sends a signal that the problem is too big for you to handle. So the whole time you're avoiding, you're building it up bigger and bigger.
Just want to add, you can be addicted to any number of other things to suit your avoidance needs.
I have hope for people who are addicted to video games though, because I know they have obtained the knowledge/capability to figure out the underlying metagames and redeploy those skills to other areas of their life. And judging by the anecdotes on this thread it looks promising.
Now imagine if they're addicted to drugs; They'll be having another health problem to resolve. If you have a choice of being addicted to something at least let it be video games.
I'm in my mid 30s and I am going through this addiction of reddit/youtube and other distractions for the past 10 years. I've always known how harmful it is and I want to change. Do you have any tips for someone like me? I was still able to become an engineer, but I feel like I can be better. Like everyone else my motivation and drive was so much higher when I was younger. I might be using these distractions as a form of escapism for my depression.
Speaking as a lifelong addict (started with likely an addiction to breastfeeding), if you're anything like me from a mental predisposition standpoint, all you have to do is stay an addict! It's that simple. There's nothing wrong with addiction, and I would argue, it's likely a survival mechanism. The trick is, form "healthy" addictions, along with the vices, assuming you need to keep some vices kicking around to stay sane. It took me until I had kids and could watch them develop, to realize I've been an addict like everyone else in my family, my whole life. It happened to be addictions to things like playing basketball, doing martial arts, exercising, making music, learning UNIX and systems internals, raising and growing food, wood milling and working, growing and smoking weed, reading everything I could, etc. etc. etc. I've been flipping from one addiction to another since 1-2 years old, and learning all along the way, often with outstanding end products produced due to my obsessive nature. Embrace it, and learn when it's time to move on. It will take time, and flipping to a new addiction is always a bit anxiety-inducing (but so is learning anything new!).
Humans inevitably become more creative and/or social to escape boredom. See what you're drawn to when you cut out media consumption. You can always go back to reddit after a few months if you've just been bored the entire time.
It's not easy for sure. In my case I found a girlfriend and started living somewhere else. So another change in life helps a lot.
Maybe you could search for something like that. Go live in another city albeit for a temporary period.
A pet programming job might also help. You might be still behind the pc. But at least it is not wasted with just gaming, movies etc. You could also try to search for a coach/psychologist who can support you going to the change process. Go for it. You will be rewarded.
Wait the article doesn’t mention Adobe XD which is Adobe’s UI design tool that competes with Figma and Sketch. XD is great for my needs and with frequent updates it is always improving.
I’m also in the camp where Adobe shortcuts are burned into my muscle memory. I’ve tried the others but am more productive using the tools I know.
Photoshop and Illustrator alone are worth it also. Some amazing power that other tools just don’t have.
XD has nearly no adoption compared to Figma. I saw a chart in the last week or so, and XD barely registered and Figma had the most adoption by far. Can't find it again atm.
We are starting to reflect the way we have organised the world in technology. Everything about life used to be fuzzy but now it's hard lines and definitions. It's going to do strange things to human culture.
Well that cat is firmly out of the bag by now. You can find a less stressful work environment though, you just need to get rid of the attitude that a strong work ethic is good for you. It’s good for your employer.
Your workouts aren’t that strenuous. So you don’t need rest and recovery. If you are pushing past your limits, you won’t even have the desire to code in the evenings.
I exercise 5 days a week for 30 minutes right after my day job ends. I'm WFH so and have weights and stationary bike in my office, so it's easy to jump onto.
Haha .. I thought I was unique in waking up early/feeling asleep early. Guess I have good company. Ritual for me is tip toeing to the basement to avoid waking up the kids and grabbing some caffeine. Biggest challenges are distractions - news, youtube, and hacker news. I need to get better at just focusing on code and not going off on tangents.
What I have found to be helpful is that sites that I might find myself wasting time - Twitter, Reddit, etc. - I block these sites via the `hosts` file. I do this on the machines on which I want to find myself productive.
On my whatever laptop - the Internet is fair game.
I've done this sort of schedule quite a lot since my first kid was born (nearly 2 years ago). We share a bedroom, and they sleep a lot easier when I'm there too - often I just go to take them to bed, and end up falling asleep too at 9pm :D
I will wake up and let my brain wonder, then get up after 15 mins or so. By that time I'm wide enough awake to start coding straight away and know what I want to accomplish in the time I have. I don't check my phone at all in this time, as that'll lead to spending two hours down a rabbit hole on Reddit.
> do you immediately start coding? What is the morning ritual?
I wake up, get dressed in the dark, and go downstairs where I immediately start coding. I leave all the lights off and focus solely on my task at hand, and I typically use a todo list in bear.app to know immediately what to work on.
Breakfast comes at 6:30am when house wakes up. Since I'm WFH for day job I can shower do morning routine before work, which usually starts around 8am.
How long have you been doing this for? Because people do get used to things like that over time. My girlfriend usually sleeps right through me getting up at night.
Getting up at 4am every day is a good start. I do this too, and there's no discipline involved in going to bed - I just get very sleepy around 8 or 9 and want to go to bed.
I'm glad it works out for you (I actually mean that), but getting tired at 9:30pm every day would make me unhappy. I really want my free/"me" time do be after everything I have to do is done.
Did the same and quit TV completely about 10 months ago. Fairly quickly after, I noticed that I am reading books every day and sleeping better (I now fall asleep consistently at same time every night.)
There is something about removing the high stimulus of TV watching that allows my brain to appreciate being productive. It's been easier to be motivated to do things I truly want instead of defaulting to the veg state each night.
I use Hover for the past 10 years. Clean UI with no ads or up sell. Free whois privacy is really nice. Only contacted support once and was positive experience.
