Posts Tagged ‘school’

Computers and me

Thursday, December 7th, 2006

This is a long one!

I’ve always liked computers. I liked that they could play games and produce documents. I liked that you could use them to draw and even make music. I liked them even more when the internet landed and you could use them to communicate. But it’s long been apparent to me that without software a computer is just a fancy electricity sucker. And in the past few years I’ve become more and more aware of how the quality of and intention behind the software can affect the usefulness and even usability of the computer. Bad software and poorly motivated software development can seriously affect the social empowerment of the end user.

(more…)

The benefit of discipline

Sunday, October 8th, 2006

I’ve had various struggles with discipline throughout my life. I wrote before about keeping focus, putting things off, and getting enough sleep.

Discipline requires dedication and decision making. Dedication is necessary for maintaining effort during adversity, and decision making is needed to ensure there is no stalling because of uncertainty. Both dedication and decision making demand a certain degree of belief in why the goal is worth striving for in the first place.

And so we come to meditation.

(more…)

Down to the wire…

Saturday, September 30th, 2006

I used to be a terrible procrastinator. Any excuse to not do something today was good enough, though the excuse was usually TV or some variant of screen watching. I would push aside most things that weren’t an immediate need until the last minute.

Anything with a deadline resulted in a flurry of rushed work. Essays that were started in the evening were finished just before I walked out the door to school in the morning. Personal projects were left undone. Cleaning simply wasn’t done (because who likes cleaning?).

(more…)