Summary of November, 2002
The major themes of November, 2002 were creativity, exploration, and parenting.
In a post titled Kissing frogs, I blogged an interview with Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, where he advocated trying as many solutions you can, to find out which one is the best.
I read Richard P. Gabriel’s Triggers & Practice: How Extremes in Writing Relate to Creativity and Learning (PDF):
- Adjustments to find a path through a labyrinth (about essays as exploratory writing; of November 2)
- Creative programming (cf. creative writing; of November 3)
This month, I began speed reading, which really transformed my reading. Before, reading was a struggle for me, and finishing a regular book usually took a month or more. See the following two posts:
- Speed reading (of November 12)
- Speed reading #2 (of November 13)
Then I commented upon Joel Spolsky’s The Law of Leaky Abstractions.
I bought Robert Cialdini’s Influence: Science and Practice as a present for a friend, but browsed through it before giving it away. The book deals with “the science of persuasion”, and it seems very interesting. See these posts:
- Terrible twos (of November 14)
- Terrible twos (cont’d) (of November 14)
- Passive bystanders (of November 14)
Another gift I bought was Linked: The New Science of Networks by Albert-László Barabási, which I also glanced through. Later, in January, 2003, I borrowed and read it.
I thought about intuition, as opposed to rationality, logic, and reason. Obviously, we need to be analytic, but intuition is often overlooked or looked down upon. What’s needed is balance.
Then I began rereading Jesper Juul’s Your Competent Child (the Swedish translation), which I warmly recommend to all parents. See the following posts:
- Your Competent Child #1 (of November 20)
- Your Competent Child #2 (of November 22)
- Your Competent Child #3 (of November 25)
- Your Competent Child #4 (of November 26)
- Your Competent Child #5 (of November 28)
- Your Competent Child #6 (of November 30)
I watched an interesting TV program about creativity and blogged a few quotes.
Then I began reading Michael Michalko’s Cracking Creativity, which caused many posts in December, 2002.
I noted that software has two users, meaning that besides the obvious users of the “external” interface, the developers of a piece of software also are users, and careful attention must be paid to the “internal interface” as well.