Don’t Let Your Idea Of Who You Are Become A Prison. 

Fun fact: the plural form of octopus is actually octopodes (oct-op-o-tees) since octopus isn’t an English word nor a Latin word. Octopuses would be the English form if octopus was an English word. Octopi would be the plural form if octopus was a Latin word. However, octopus is a Greek word which means that the grammatically correct plural form of octopus is octopodes.

Things Programmers Shout #454

“A different error message! Finally some progress!” // submitted by @falterfire

Things Programmers Shout #684

“WHERE IS THE BUG? WHERE IS THE BUG?? IT WAS HERE LAST NIGHT WHY ARE YOU WORKING PROPERLY NOW WHERE DID IT GO?” // submitted by @lemememeringue

Allow yourself to be a beginner. No-one starts off being excellent.

Unknown (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

Things Programmers Shout #698

“Okay, well that’s still an error but at least it’s a different error.” // submitted by @freedominfantasy

person: How many languages are you learning?

me: Uhh, human or programming?

6 Things I Learned From Studying For Exams in College

If you skip a topic or don’t study it thoroughly enough because you think it won’t be on the exam, it will be. Study that in particular so you won’t be surprised when it shows up as the first question. Unless your professor explicitly states that it won’t be on the exam, don’t skip any topics.

Put aside the content you’re comfortable and familiar with and start studying the things you don’t know. It’s hard and time consuming but that’s where the actual learning happens.

Start studying at least 4 days in advance. I always regret not starting earlier when I’m at the library 24 hours before the exam and not even close to being done. When I’m having trouble focusing, I’ll sit there and imagine myself an hour before the exam scrambling to finish up a topic, wishing that I had these extra few minutes, hours, or days that I have now. Take advantage of the time you have right now.

Changing up my location helps a lot when I’m studying. If I study in the same corner at the library, eventually my brain will start associating that spot with everything I do in that chair, including wasting time. For me, new location + new material = focus. A few location ideas: a quiet corner in the library, a noisy floor in the library, at your desk at home, a room with a view of the outdoors from high up, a bench/table outside, a cafe or brunch place.

Stay on top of studying and homework from day 1, not after syllabus week and not a month into the semester. When you submit a homework assignment, make it a point to 100% understand everything you just handed in. Homework is assigned for a reason; they’re meant as practice exercises for the material you learned and exams often mimic them. Once you hand in homework, you should know and understand the material. This saves you time when it’s finals week and you have old and new material to study.

Well before the exam, make a list of topics you don’t understand and get your questions answered. There have been so many times where I didn’t fully understand something and thought, “It’s okay, they’re probably not going to ask that,” and it shows up on the exam. When you get your question answered, branch out and ask things like, “What if it weren’t this particular situation/these particular numbers but a different one instead. How would you work through it this time?” (physics/math) or “What caused that/what came after that as a result?” (history). Try to understand all possible scenarios if you can.

Did you know that 2015 equals 11111011111 in binary, a palindrome?

Oh, and by the way, on May 15th, 2015 at 02:09:25 UTC, Unix time will be 1010101010101010101010101010101.

Cool resume cheat sheet