A quick list of what I’m reading this week:
On order:
Back in January of this year I finally signed up for Brennan Dunn’s DYFC Masterclass. I say finally because I had it in my mind to do so, for several years now, ever since my colleague Joel Hooks gave an overwhelming testimonial for it. When I signed up, I got DYFR for free, along with a ton of other resources. All of the resources I received have been phenomenal. But that has just been the icing on the cake. The real benefit, I think has been Read More
My ten year son is quickly catching up to me in terms of comfort with command line / terminal. He’s going through Learn to Program with Minecraft Plugins, which I heard about through our local Coder Dojo. It’s an intro to programming in Java with Minecraft as the interest / lure. I was surprised to find that he took a command-line approach in the book, but even more surprised to find how readily my kid picked up on it. I highly recommend picking up the e-book if you want to learn programming yourself or want your kids to learn. Prior to this we picked up Scratch, which we also got introduced to through Coder Dojo, but I found that the kids quickly devolved into just playing games or spending hours drawing instead of actually learning to code anything.
For my six year old, though, I found Kodable for free on the iTunes store. I found it while searching for something that was (a) based on Logo and (b) would work on the iPad. Kodable is extremely well done – it teaches concepts like iteration and conditional logic through a series of puzzle games with cute graphics and sound effects. My daughter doesn’t feel like she’s learning, she feels like she’s playing a game and letting her play is a “reward” rather than an exercise. After her first session, she told her mom “I’m contracting for baba (daddy)”!
I’m over half-way done reading A Fighter’s Heart: One Man’s Journey Through the World of Fighting
Also found this interview of him, but no luck on the National Geographic Show (A Fighting Chance).
Still no sign of the martial arts video (or any MAX related video, for that matter) from the guys at the Yahoo! Developers Network. No wonder they wanted me to go kick the Google! guys in the head…I guess they realize they can’t compete with them. 😛
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Update: Found no way to (nicely) link to my review of the book on LinkedIn, so posting it here:
I found this book insightful and revealing. It also made me realize that I need to be careful when selecting a jujitsu club to train at as injuries seem quite common and depending on the severity and/or type, can hamper an individual for the rest of his life. Sam Sheridan gives a revealing look behind the scenes of boxing, muay thai, brazillian jujitsu and other martial arts, especially from the perspective of what goes on ‘behind the scenes’ in the competitive arena. He illuminates things fans of sports and martial arts don’t always appreciate, like the unfair way boxing matches are arranged, the brutal nature of muay thai and the fact that those who participate in the sport mostly do so from a economically desperate situation.