This is the best pair of budget earbuds I have come across. They carry a heavy bass, and sound so much better than standard issue apple phones or the millions of places that sell $4.99 pairs that break in a week. They cost around $32, but sound just as good as $100 pairs. Speaking of which, ‘designer’ headphones like Beats By Dre, while not an awful product by any means, are grossly overpriced and have costs that mostly consist of the celebrity’s brand. These sound better than which cost about 6x as much. Sennheiser is one example of many criminally ignored audio experts, at least by the masses. I would highly recommend this for anyone who listens to a lot of rap/electronic music, but it sounds perfectly fine listening to anything else; the high-end sounds don’t fade when played at full volume, so they don’t just sound like aluminum cans in your ears.
This is such a great idea for effortlessly keeping up with the weather; it texts you every morning including a weather emoji. The pic below sums it up pretty well, but definitely worth the 10 seconds it takes.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4BYQZNmyNMpMWQ5TkpWRVhxRTg&usp=drive_web
This is the folder my computer uses to cycle through backgrounds every minute or so; there’s a lot of rap-related images, but I also have a lot of natural landscapes and photos of interesting houses and buildings. I’ve attached a couple of my favorites. I wish I had the links for all of these, one day I’ll use (great reverse-image search to find where an image first came from, extremely useful and fast), but not today.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21501279?shelf=%23ALL%23
This is a link to my bookshelf on . If you’ve never heard of the site, it’s what I’ve found to be the best way to organize your library and find new content (it recommends books based on your uploads, and also allows you to connect to Facebook and see what your friends who use the site read and what they rated it, an online book club of sorts.) Anyways, I read mostly non-fiction. I’m fascinated with science, technology, intelligence, big data, comedy, music, and business books, but there’s other genres in the 500+ books I’ve pinned so far. And don’t get me wrong, I think most of these books are readable for most everyone, so don’t get scared off by some of these titles. The books and speakers I enjoy and envy most are those who are not only intelligent but can simplify and explain their thesis to the world, the way the authors of do, for example.
Here’s what I’m reading now:
A book about what the most intelligent people in society can’t stop thinking about; I’ve just started it.
The story of 3 different Harvard Business School grads who paved their own ways to success. It ties in a lot of business lessons that the three learned pre and post school, and really inspires me to get working. One of the guys became the largest trader of dog food in Japan simply because he lived there and realized how pampered and regal their dogs are treated there.
http://www.kratosguide.com/16-habits-you-should-do-every-day/
This link above is what I’ve found to be a useful template for making one’s real-world routine. I know these are a dime a dozen, I’ve read them all. With a section on implementation, this article also helped solidify the vague, too often cliché advice mostly given. The simple idea of keeping an excel spreadsheet proves excellent for automatically organizing what would be reams of paper, or worse, mental notes that never get inked. Not everything on this list was groundbreaking, but anybody looking for a quick article that has everything perfectly tailored to their life already probably isn’t that serious about working towards self-improvement, now, are they? I’ll put my favorite step below, even though it has been said many times over:
“I started this habit at a half hour a day. Recently I’ve started reading about an hour a day and am burning through books. With a constant flow of information in, you increase your ability for information to flow out (applying knowledge to your life)”
This has been on my wish list for years, definitely a watch that stands out. Apparently they don’t produce this design anymore, so anyone looking for temporary, dead-end work as a watchmaker fax send me your info, qualifications, and best Regis Philbin impersonation.
http://www.omegawatches.com/collection/de-ville/prestige/co-axial-small-seconds/46138002
Mark Cuban’s Idiot’s Guide to High Frequency Trading
A really easy way to understand what all of the hype about high frequency trading (HFT). Basically, they get the information milliseconds before everyone else and likewise can act that much faster. It really is cheating. I’ve picked a quote from the article that sums it up pretty well, but the whole thing is worth reading.
“IMHO, this is the definition of High Frequency Trading. Taking advantage of an advantage in speed and algorithmic processing to jump in front of trades from slower market participants to create small guaranteed wins millions of times a day. A High Frequency of Trades is required to make money.
There in lies the problem. This is where the game is rigged.
If you know that by getting to the front of the line you are able to see or anticipate some material number of the trades that are about to happen, you are GUARANTEED to make a profit. What is the definition of a rigged market ? When you are guaranteed to make a profit.”
Been a while since I posted on here, but I’m getting back into Indie/Americana/Alternative music again. Monsters of Folk are cool, it’s an underground supergroup of indie musicians like Jim James of My Morning Jacket.
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