Reading Digest 06, or What does Leo Tolstoy have to do with it?

Hello there, it's been a while, here's what interested me recently. Learning is fun!… and it will be even more fun to revisit these, say, a year from now and verify that I don't remember a thing :)

Binary in Javascript—for me this firmly falls into the category “I doubt I'll ever need to use it, yet it is still very cool”. Using bitwise operators in JavaScript to pack large collections of small data.

Write What You Know (Now)—resonates well with my reasons for writing to this blog (as rare as it happens), to leave breadcrumbs of my own experience, and also to possibly help others walking on a similar path:
…“But nobody will read it,” you say. That may be true. But the opposite could also happen.
ContentEditable — The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—alright, how did I missed this? There is a browser-supported (with LOTS of small print, but hey) method for inline editing of HTML contents. Looks like it existed for years, and slowly improving. Something to keep an eye on.

An Intuitive Guide To Exponential Functions & e—as a math-head, I blush to admit my ignorance about e. I knew it pops up in formulas often, and it's value is “2.7 then Leo Tolstoy's birth year twice” (I kid you not, 2.718281828…). Incidentally, that's the sole reason I know Mr.Tolstoy's year of birth. This article explains the meaning of e, and even calculates its value for us. Enlightening!

How to Stay Focused When You Get Bored Working Toward Your Goals—here's one to motivate all of us normal people who sometimes get bored, but still understand that any worthwhile goal takes some of that “while” to get some of that “worth”:
…He was saying that really successful people feel the same boredom and the same lack of motivation that everyone else feels. They don’t have some magic pill that makes them feel ready and inspired every day. But the difference is that the people who stick with their goals don’t let their emotions determine their actions. Top performers still find a way to show up, to work through the boredom, and to embrace the daily practice that is required to achieve their goals.
Five things I’ve learned at Failbetter: Producer Lottie Bevan—good brief humane insights, where I especially second things 4 (People > processes) and 5 (sometimes it is OK not to plan your future). Of course I'd agree with a fellow intellectual omnivore (what a term!).

Speaking of terms, Bikeshedding!
…A committee whose job is to approve plans for a nuclear power plant may spend the majority of its time on relatively unimportant but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bikeshed, while neglecting the design of the power plant itself, which is far more important but also far more difficult to criticize constructively.
Been there, done that.

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