Almost all of those were new to me 🤯

A. LTS B. Responsibility, see the "mystery meat jdk build" with Debian

What do you mean by LTS? Doesn’t AdoptOpenJdk provides the same?

Some providers could theoretically guarantee support past the end of official LTS

Backporting patches themselves, etc

Ok understood. While I see the argument, I still find it kinda of a PR rather than something really useful

It is not PR. Microsoft is using Java more and more internally so it makes sense for them to have a build they control. The general public benefits by having another alternative.

I think it's good to see that Microsoft has interest in Java. It makes the platform stronger if it's not solely carried forward by a single vendor.

It is surely not going to hurt anybody, that’s granted. My question was more like why shall I care about yet another build that is from the exact same sources

First, even being built nominally from the same sources is not a guarantee of the build's contents https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk8u-dev/2019-May/009330.html

Second, Java 11 is planned for support until 2026. Some vendors will probably wish to extend it

Third, there are certainly PR elements and "embrace" in play

I see I see

Looks beautiful! Thanks!

For example see https://graphql.gklijs.tech/results/graphql-servers-feb/average-latency using Oz and Vega. Pretty easy API, and lots of options.

Doing something monotonic works for me. Cooking or cleaning for example

The only requirements - it must not be anything creative

stop trying to spend creative energy all the time? fall back to some activity that is more rote but enjoyable?

Is it possible there have been circumstances changes in your life? Are you dealing with more stress for some reason?

not really. just drudgery of pandemic, etc

First, it's okay to take a break. Nothing wrong with just taking it easy at the end of the day for a few weeks. Second, try some inspiring reading material which will make you want to tinker and experiment. A good talk, paper or book which makes you say "I want to try implementing that"

I don’t really have a scientific explanation for it, but I find that to the extent I’m able to abstain from scrolling on social media (especially Twitter), I feel more energetic and less “sapped” in the evenings. TikTok is the exception because a little bit of that can be hilarious/invigorating.

Social media is pretty much designed to make you miserable. We already know it's designed to capture attention. All research on consumer spending shows unhappy people tend to consume more. Draw your own conclusions on what they're incentivised to promote and foster

A big ol’ ➕ for avoiding “doom scrolling” on social media. I only check Twitter/Facebook at lunch time and dinner time and otherwise stay off it a lot more than I used to. As for learning and what my wife refers to as “play work” (as opposed to the “work work” I do during the day), I have definitely found it a bit harder to get motivated around some of that. I’ve taken to taking full days off work and I make myself relax/read/do chores (something mindless) in the morning and then sitting down after lunch and spending a couple of focused hours on whatever “play work” I want in the afternoon. That way I can sleep in if I need to but still treat the afternoon as “work” and then step away from it at dinner time.

I’ve also started to set aside one afternoon each weekend for “play work” / learning. I don’t do it every weekend, but most weekends I’ll spend 2-3 focused hours either Saturday or Sunday after brunch, away from the TV, and away from social media. This past weekend I read Zach Tellman’s “Elements of Clojure” end-to-end again to try to soak more of it up.

But, definitely, the unceasing drudgery of the pandemic is getting to even the most introverted of us at this point 😐

I find it more enjoyable to work on projects after work, its getting through the working day that is difficult!

But when I do want to get away from programming stuff, I like lego. Yes, I'm an adult... but still, building a bit lego thing is pretty great. It's almost mindless but still quite fun / interesting.

One other thing I’d recommend is to not get yourself down if you can only make very little progress. That steady progress, even a line of code is a lot better than just giving up on it. So if you can even add a comment, I’d recommend that.

After having played music for almost my entire life, I stopped practicing for a year and I don’t regret it

I think that’s a great tip. Another one I heard a while back, which seems to work with me, is to deliberately leave some little “known” thing unfinished when you stop for the day or night. Like, you could easily just fix that bug and get the test passing before closing the laptop. But if you leave it for the next time, then when you pick it up again, you’ll immediately have something easy you can fix to build up momentum (since often times, just getting started is the hardtest part).

Yeah, I find that helps me. If I'm not motivated then break down what I want to achieve into small tasks, sometimes very very small tasks. • Create a git repo. • Create an empty project. • blah • Blah But make sure at least one of the tasks is something that I can achieve RIGHT NOW in a few minutes. If the a few of them are like that then great, it's a way to get started. I can tick them off my todo list, which I keep in emacs and I find that sort of motivates me to keep going

I saw something on twitter the other day that i liked. How we turned the point of hobbies to be really good at them instead of enjoying doing them. I've been trying to run more often and just enjoy it. Kinda fits with the mindless thing as well

Running is excellent for putting your conscious worries on the back burner and endorphins

I’ve recently started intermittent fasting (simply skipping breakfast and eating a late lunch). It’s made working on projects/learning easier for because I have more energy throughout the day and am less sleepy after eating.

The early literature on intermittent fasting also suggests other health benefits:

@U11BV7MTK I got a work laptop from my employer. I just close it and open my personal laptop immediately and crunch out 1 hour for my personal projects after my work hours are finished.

i work on an open source project so i just use my single laptop. but i don't think that's the problem its just focusing on stuff at the moment seems more difficult. I have lots of things i want to do I just don't do them. couple compiler papers i want to read, study cassandra source code, figure out how to introduce a SAT solver into work project, etc

with 1 hour a day for long period of time, I managed to bootstrap couple of projects that generate my some additional beer money.

I, unfortunately, have issues focusing on one project. So for me -- juggling projects in parallel is easy.

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck

☝️ by CGP Grey

You might enjoy Cal Newport's work where he talks about deep leisure activities :). There's a great part in "How to live on 24 hours a day" (which also talks about leisure): > One of the chief things which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change—not rest, except in sleep. > The tired feeling hangs heavy over the mighty suburbs of London like a virtuous and melancholy cloud, particularly in winter. > But when you arrange to go to the theatre what happens? You rush to the suburbs; you spare no toil to make yourself glorious in fine raiment; you rush back to town in another train; you keep yourself on the stretch for four hours, if not five;; Essentially - your brain needs change. You have the energy, but the tired feeling will sit over you if you do not do something else. 24 hours a day also talks about training your brain to concentrate (which Cal Newport also talks about a lot). You need to spend time sitting, focusing. The brain is like a muscle in this way.

Take long walks 🙂

A few thoughts: • listen to your body: if you are too tired for creative work, don't try to force it, prioritize getting rest or more hours of sleep first • hammock time is possible in many shapes and forms: personally I like riding my bicycle a few hours or do some gardening to vent the ole' brain. I guess activities like painting or building Lego models are also good for allowing the background brain to work while focusing the active brain on a simple task • exercise is paramount to clear your body of stress hormones, you may want to flush these out before doing creative work • spend time in sunlight or outdoors, personally i get brainfog from too much chair-time • optimize office/creative space for silence (if you're an introvert) and good air • radically prune your twitter/facebook feeds, don't consume content that gets under your skin • it's OK not to be super-productive all the time :thumbsup:

last point definitely should comes first )

Not looking for dual language podcasts where people are trying to teach. More like listening to news/stories etc. but in simple French.

Maybe recordings of reading children's stories in French?

I tried reading children's stories but quickly lost interest. I found a nice app that had the story in French and the English translation side by side.

Yes, for French. A news channel will be a good fit, but is there one where they intentionally use simple language?

https://coffeebreaklanguages.com/category/coffee-break-french/ https://onethinginafrenchday.podbean.com/

One thing in French a Day and Coffee Break French might be up your alley

Looks like they are. Thanks for the links.

Wow. A mid-western, mandarin-speaking, belly-dancing cat judge. Now that’s what I call an eclectic skill set!

She is very unique 🙂 We’re just about to celebrate our 21st anniversary. Well, the 21st anniversary of our legal wedding. We’ve had five weddings (so far).

congratulations!

That depends strongly on what kind of language you’re learning and what your mother tongue is. If you speak a European language and learn another, then grammar is mostly superficial. If you’re learning a language from another language family, then grammar is essential.

I can say from experience that learning e.g. Chinese or Korean without spending a lot of time on grammar will give you very little comprehension trying to parse language beyond the most basic sentences. Relatively speaking, Spanish and English grammar are basically the same (and they have many cognates) so you can pretty much rely on your implicit knowledge of English grammar when parsing a Spanish sentence. This is not so when you leave the comfort of Indo-European languages.