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My Twitter feed includes TED talk announcements. The one that caught my eye this afternoon was ‘9 thought-provoking talks in four minutes or less‘. Whatever the topic, I appreciate someone working to express something well in a short period of time – thought it was worth a few minutes to hear a talk or two.

The first talk in my stream was Matt Cutts ‘Try something new for 30 days‘ The idea is that anyone can try something out for 30 days : it’s long enough to let you form a habit, and not so long that it’s too overwhelming to begin or make it through. It’s also long enough to actually let you achieve something.

I think I’ve read the idea in other magazines and such before, and can’t state whether Matt is its originator or just a good person at expressing it. That said, he did get me thinking – what are good 30 day goals for me?

Quick run-down of ideas:
– read the Bible every day (that oughta already have stuck, but I fall off the wagon and have to get myself back on)
– some sort of fitness activity : squats, pushups, … These aren’t new, but I could get to a new level. Beats aiming at new levels on Temple Run 2
– a software activity: code in a particular language every day for, well, 30 days.
– a more specific software goal: build a mobile game. Doesn’t have to be great – just a game. Frankly, copy an idea, so the idea itself isn’t the blocker. Since the goal isn’t to make money/copyright, just try to get a simple game working.
– unicycle… As in, I can’t now, but I want to. I have two unicycles – warm them up.
– garden. An odd thirty day goal, perhaps, but maybe week 1 is planning, week 2 is seeding/planting, and by week 3 I’m weeding/watering? [Highly optimistic timeline, but I’d love to get in a gardening habit that doesn’t die out in weed-choked, low yield apathy.]

… more inspiration / ideas to come. Putting it out there here helps me catch the idea and inspiration, and then see it again later and do a ‘hey, I wanted to do this’ thing that’ll nudge me forward.

Feeling a bit inspired now, and only did 1 of the “9 thought-provoking talks.

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Just saw an image of a woman giving CPR to an infant, and it reminded me of a few things I need to act upon.

Learning CPR is important – being ready for the emergency, for the opportunity to save a life – that’s important. I was trained in college, when I was a rugby coach. But I haven’t renewed in a long time. Time to find a class…

Giving blood is important. My body produces blood, through no talent of mine. Even on my worst day, in terms of impact to the world, I can give blood and help tip the balance for someone’s life. Time to donate again, particularly before I get my next tattoo (tattoos mean you can’t give again for a year – the ink can be in your bloodstream, which could cause an allergic reaction in others…). Which means, time to take more iron – to not repeat the last ill-fated donation. If I’m going to get my finger pricked, I’m darn sight gonna give some blood this time.

Sharing my faith, particularly with my kids, is important. In fact, growing in my faith, so that it’s more evident as being meaningful, is even more important. My oldest daughter has been asked by our church to consider confirmation classes, and I think she’s likely to side-step this year… She can claim she’s shy (true), that it’s a lot of work (true, too)… I count that as a loss, but I’d rather have her do so when _she’s_ ready to investigate than when I wish she were ready. However, our pastor sent ahead the confirmation “to-do” list. I want to share the list with her, and then let her hold me accountable for working through the list myself… It may make an impression on her, it may not, but I certainly think that the things they ask teenagers to learn and practice are ones that would be valuable for me, as well.

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Have had reason to do some new things with Git of late.

git archive: exporting and then zipping up or tarring up my git repo, minus any of my .git folders. Otherwise known as: not accidentally shipping my personal credentials out with my repository. (Note: yes, I’m aware that there are other means of storing credentials, such that they don’t end up in your .git/config areas… I just hadn’t configured them at that point for that project…)

git checkout-index, as discussed on StackOverflow: alternate approach to exporting, ala svn export.

Either of these hep better than this:
$ find . -type f -not -path ‘./notThisDirectory’ -exec cp ‘{}’ ‘/c/Development/toThisDirectory/{}’ \;

The problem with the above is that, although it nicely didn’t merge in the ‘notThisDirectory’, it did copy in my .git/config, thus making my separate local repository copy get remarkably confused about where it should push/pull from…