Starting Bootcamp. need help

 Started the Flatiron School Data Science course today. it's exciting, and a little nerve racking. as i need to finish it in 18 weeks, even though they are giving me more time, because i have no choice.

its a very thorough course, with lots of important subjects covered. they also require that i write a blog showing my research. i tend to think that  my research and work in programming is useless and boring as I'm mostly finding stuff that has been found many times over. like a kid who discovers a long lost artifact in an RPG, only to realize every person who has played the game for more than a few hours has done the same

but maybe I'm wrong

todays project, besides the lessons from Flatiron, was to make a Django app

i already have an idea for my Capstone project (that's like the magnum opus of your boot camp. the one project to rule them all and prove you have the chops) but i need a database of users. so i intend on , god willing, writing the app this week, somehow deploying it to a cloud service, probably google, [but i like DigitalOcean and AWS, so I'm not set on one] and then ask all my Twitter and Facebook followers to start using it so that I can have data to work with

the two biggest issues that i haven't figured out yet

1) security. it's going to ask users some personal questions, and i want to make sure that nobody can access the data and abuse it

2) sessions. i expect to have billions of users eventually, and i have no idea how to scale it reliably

also, i didn't see it in Flatiron's curriculum, but i want to know big O data concepts, nd i didn't see them covered. i may not have looked well enough, but apparently Google asks about that stuff fin their interviews, and if my app doesn't get investors, I'm aiming to work at Google.

if you know about security and sessions with Django apps, please leave a comment on where i should look!

no direction

i haven't been very serious about this, been very inconsistent. but i just saw a tweet about blogging being useful, so i'm coming back.

hopefully, i will post stuff weekly, to keep the juices flowing. And maybe, just maybe, this might help someone!

i want to start my own business. not sure what or how, but i would like tha danger, fear, struggle and reward of running my own business. yet, i have a family, who relies on me, so i can't just drop everything

also, i don't have a specific plan, which is essential to making a business.

i have many reasons for wanting to start one

to rely only on God, to be able to give something to my children, to help people, to hire black people and hopefully make them independent financially. 

the hardest part is being focused. i'm way too interested in so many things that i have trouble focusing. sometimes, it feels like it would be better if i could just change my brain. but i can't, so we gotta work with what we got.

hopefully one day i will figure out how to be focused, but until then, i'm just going to keep trying to do what i can to survive

stop with the freemiums!

I'm tired and annoyed at freemium games.

I recently tried out EAs SimCity for mobile. It's got great graphics, and smooth gameplay, but it's a far cry from the entertainment quality I have come to expect from the franchise. I'd honestly rather play an emulated version of SimCity 2000 than the mobile version, for one simple reason: freemium.

You see, they give you a few 'dollars' at the beginning to speed up production. But by the time you get a hang of the game, you run out, and are forced to pay more, or essentially stop playing. 

So I deleted the game.

It may be because I'm in my thirties, and possibly too accustomed to "the way it used to be"

And yes, I know programmers and designers work hard and deserve to get paid for their work, but the freemium model has gotten sickening.

Forget about the "pay to win" culture that it has fostered, sending the message to young gamers who are poorer that their efforts and skills do not matter, it's simply a frustrating and eye rolling experience to play through a game up to a certain point, and it's not in a darksouls kind of way. It's because you know what you should or could do to progress, but you can't, Because you are lacking some resources that can only be obtained with real world money. And when you think about it, even for the briefest moment, you realize that the necessity to pay will come up again and probably again. At which point you erase the game from your phone, to prevent you from wasting your hard earned cash.

I've paid for in-app purchases. Like in PUBG, where the gameplay has nothing to do with how much you pay. It's a great game, and so far, nobody has made anything better. I will probably pay them again for some skins, since the game is quality, and fair, and I support programmers when I can.

I've even paid for items in tacticool. Where items you buy do give you some advantage, but not nearly as much as of you play with friends and have great teamwork. 

What I'm trying to say is, freemium can be done right, but most developers are doing it wrong.

If rather pay for a descent full mobile game, than get trapped in the stupid freemium hole of torture and deception.

And I've paid up to $20 for a mobile game (KOTOR). I don't have any statistics on this, but I believe, if more mobile games, that were made well, would have a single one time price, they would sell just as  well, or even better, since you will be rewarding gamers for their efforts, which is great for brand image.

Or maybe I'm wrong, and freemiums are the new way to play. 

But judging on what I hear from all the gamers I know, who are all non professional gamers, and are probably very similar to the bulk of consumers that companies are relying on for profits, we aren't happy with it.

chasidic weight loss program

thank hashem, and my mother, i'm healthier than a race horse!

how do i know?

recently the company i work for, in an effort to put down our healthcare costs worked out a deal that if we get health screenings, we can get a big discount to our weekly healthcare costs.

i appreciated it greatly. after they give you these tests you get a one on one sesion with a nutritionist. the woman told me that thank hashem i am very healthy.

how am i so healthy? its from god. and possibly the way that mu mother trained me to eat, and possibly the fact that i use citibike daily.

then it occured to me why dont i teach others to do like o do?

here is my weight loss program, mostly designed by my mom, based on jewish concepts and ideals

step one

designate one day a week to eat things you enjoy, because you enjoy them. 

in Judaism we call this shabbos. while eating to your hearts content does not in any way capture the essence of shabbos, on shabbos there is a command to enjoy it. the rabbis learned that this means to enjoy by eating meat and drinking wine, or whatever is considered a delicacy. make sure you have one day a week to enjoy, or you will give up on the rest of the program. 

shabbos teaches us that this world was created by god, and that you have to take a break from the stress once a week. 

note! make sure its the same day every week, because if you make your shabbos of one week on Saturday and the proceeding sunday your shabbos foe the next week, well you haven't really accomplished much.

step two

eat healthy the rest of the week

my mom always made us oatmeal in the winter and cereal in the summer, some days. she always mixes it up to this day, sometimes buckwheat pancakes, or bagels with lox and a salad. always some form of carb high in fiber, and some salad

for dinner, she had a rule; you can eat your french fries (etc) once you eat something green! i live with the motto "a salad a day, keeps anything that makes you uncomfortable except "suits" away". okay i just made that one up, but i do try to have a salad a day.

step three

find something to do for exercise at least twice a week that is fun!

it must be fun, i repeat, it must be fun.

if its not fun you will give up unless you are very angry and have something to prove. i bike thank hashem. it is fun zipping through the city with an orange helmet, and seeing all thats happening while getting fresh air and feeling like my own effort is making me go almost ad fast as cars. if you like swimming, join a sports club. if its rock climbing you prefer, i know in nyc there is Brooklyn boulders. if you like intense sword fighting and cosplaying, join NY Jedi. or learn decelerated kung fu and join a tai chi group, there are some in the morning at the manhattan entrance to the manhattan bridge( then you can defeat all those evil guys who move in slow motion). if you look you will find.

it says in the torah "nothing stands in the way of will power" i hear that phrase over and over throughout my high school/beis-medrash years and it annoyed me to my core. "its not true" i would scream! its not true because there are things i really want and i don't get them no matter hard i try, trying harder or smarter. for instance, if i want to fly without wings, or external propulsion can i? if you really want to… 

an this past year i realized it is true. but it comes with a catch. the catch is sort of common sense which is why nobody mentions it.

 i guess hashem wanted me to learn the hard way.

you can do anything you want to that fits into the laws of what god established as reality, but you cant do everything.

so pick one thing, focus on that, daven to hashem, and you will succeed 

electronics, dreams and god

have you ever had a life changing thing happen to you, that didn't involve marriage , life or death? no?

me either.

i believe in hard work and determination.

right now i am working for a big electronics company that i cannot name, for reasons that i cannot tell you. every day i see, play with and test electronics. and it dawned upon me that i dont REALLY know how all this stuff works! 

im not talking about the basic functions like using ios, or that radios use radio waves. im talking about what is the difference between watts and volts and amps? and if everyone cares about watts , then why do we ask people if they feel amped? they should feel watted. 

the truth is i already know allot of this stuff, but there is an old chasidic teaching  "yeridah tzorech aliyah" a decent for the purpose of an ascent. 

so im going to pretend that i know nothing about electronics and start from the bottom with basic circuits and fundamental concepts, and work my way up to the engineering level im yirtza hashem. (with khan academy, and OSW from MIT, its possible!) and i might learn some new things about what i thought was simple. i might also learn some more about G-D.

i will however learn things my way, the way that works for me. that means i have to have practical experiments and projects to prove and understand how these things work. and if there are concepts that have to be written out mathematically, g-d should give me the strength and knowledge to make some good animations. 

-yoni

fashion statement

im your typical hipster, i eat a strict diet which consists of kosher food and allot of salad

i have a beard, i wear a hat like Fidel Castro, lehavdil, i use citibike.  I even have a good photo on instagram of my mustache action.

and its time that i started a new trend. this was an inspiration from my african american neighbors who walk around with a considerable amount of thier boxers showing out their pants. and i thought "these guys are truly expressing themselves! they have taken the norm of dressing in an organized way, and added an artistic touch to their dressing routine!" 

My idea was this, why stop by the bottom, go down to the shoes! and i am now walking around with my laces untied. i maybe tripping more often, and my laces are leaving trails of knotted  pieces of hair and garbage they sweep up., but these are the sacrifices we must make for fashion.

Sometimes people come in to the secret place that i work and ask me, "which one LOOKS better". looks better? i know a little about design and the effect of colors on the brain, but my job is electronics! not fashion. i wondered why would someone ask my opinion on the way something looks. i don't dress all that well, and i don't quite know much about what looks good on myself. but people kept on asking me. 

I was always of the opinion that one should make wardrobe decisions soley based on function and maybe a little fun, i.e. wearing costumes of fantasy characters. 

why were these people asking my opinion. 

and then i realized, they want me to tell them what to do.

everyone has some aspect of their life that they are not the most confident in and ask for advice, and as a responsible caring individual i believe that we should all provide useful truthful advice to anyone who asks in ernest. 

if not, i may just be starting a movement of people walking the street with one tied shoe

fashion statement.