Author Archives: Amer

“Tiger Mom” study shows the parenting method doesn’t work. – Slate Magazine

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Kim also measured the outcomes for each of her categories. Supportive parents had the best developmental outcomes, as measured by academic achievement, educational attainment, family obligation (considered positive outcomes), academic pressure, depressive symptoms, and parent-child alienation (considered negative).Academic achievement and attainment were purely data-driven, while the latter four came from different assessments developed by academics over the years (the academic pressure rating is Kim’s own), which, while considered reliable, are inherently somewhat subjective. Children of easygoing parents were second in outcomes, while tiger moms produced kids who felt more alienated from their parents and experienced higher instances of depressive symptoms. They also had lower GPAs, despite feeling more academic pressure.

via “Tiger Mom” study shows the parenting method doesn’t work. – Slate Magazine.

Gym vs Fitness Video Games

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Last year, we decided to save cost of gym and started to workout at home using video games. At that time we had PS3, we got EA Active 2 and a few dance games. Initially, we worked out everyday and we could feel it working. It was fun watching your heart rate in EA Sports Active 2, and The Fight: Lights Out is extremely addictive and exhausting.

But then slowly we stopped using these games. We even bought Xbox 360 Kinect to add variety but that didn’t work either. Every fitness game was exciting initially but then it gets boring after a while and we end up buying something new.

This year we are back at gym. I don’t regret our experiment with fitness games. It has increased number of different ways we can workout. But IMHO there is no real substitute for gym. There are many reasons like:

  • When working out at home, it is easy to get distracted. You get an email, your dog wants to play, wife is bored etc. Once at gym, there are not many distractions.
  • Working out at home by yourself is lonely even when using video games. At gym, you feed off other people’s energy and feel more motivated. Although I rarely ever socialize in gym but being surrounded by people with same goals as me feels good.
  • There are some exercises that you just cannot do at home unless you have a full home gym. On other hand, I learned many bodyweight exercises from EA Active 2 and Nike+ Kinect Training.
  • It is way too easy to slack off at home. Feeling tired? Let’s just press power button. Once at gym, it feels a lot worse to cut your workout short than just keep going.

And yes there are some advantages of fitness video games too:

  • Tracking progress is all automated in video games. 
  • I learned many different exercises using just bodyweight like burpee.
  • Bad weather is no longer an excuse to not workout.
  • Dance games will teach skills that you can use in other areas of your life. ;)
  • There are always new video games to try when one gets boring.

It seems like video games have some advantages over gym but gym is still better way to workout, at least for me.

PHP Programming on Chromebook

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Here is my setup:

  • Secure Shell - for accessing server and commiting code,
  • ShiftEdit - probably the best and simplest web based PHP editor,
  • BitBucket – for free private repos.

I would say ShiftEdit made my life a lot easier. Before I was using vi in shell for writing code. It works but is slightly harder to use. I tried other web based PHP editors but they didn’t provide any straight forward way to setup a website based on sftp. Instead they want to use PaaS such as OpenShift or Heroku.

Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography

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I highly recommend everyone read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. It is pretty amazing read and very inspiring. Franklin was your average guy, from an average family. I was halfway through the book but could not see how this young man will create a nation.

Perhaps he got lucky a few times, but he worked hard and made his own luck.

This book is full of great ideas and advice. My favorite is Franklin’s method of improving himself. He had a list of 13 traits or habits that he wanted to improve. So he used to track those in a grid daily. You can see examples of his charts: https://www.google.com/search.

I have created my own list and tracking it in Google Docs. Here is my list:Capture

This is just one example. There is a lot more to learn from Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography. I am sure I will be re-reading it many times.

First Temptation – Tynan

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Watching a single episode of a good show isn’t just an hour down the tubes– it’s potentially EVERY hour of that show down the tubes. That scares me. So when people want me to watch some show they like, I almost never do.

via First Temptation – Tynan.

There are many times when I just want to stop working on side projects and just enjoy everyday things like watching TV or playing video games. But I cannot watch TV without feeling guilty. I love video games, but again every time I play a video game, I feel guilty.

Most of the time I don’t go out seeking a new video game to play. I am usually bored at home, download a few demos from PSN. Thinking that I am cleverly saving money while taking care of boredom, but then end up liking some games enough to go purchase and wasting many more hours. Then if the new game is really good and it comes with sequels, I end up wasting even more time and money.

Same thing happens with TV. I turn on mind numbing TV when I am really bored and unable to do anything productive. End up liking one show enough to start recording it and wasting many more possibly productive hours.

Anyways, until Speak With Native is ready for users, I am not going aggressively cut back on watching TV or playing video games. And if I do, it would be only for Hina. I don’t think she will like this but maybe she will support me.

Learning vs Doing

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So last weekend I had decided on learning and using Laravel as my default PHP framework for personal projects. This weekend I am back on CodeIgniter.

Well there is more.

Last weekend, I watched tons of Laravel tutorial videos. Started using Composer. Setup basic site. Got everything working. I enjoyed learning a new framework. But then when I started to write real code, everything was taking longer. I had to look up how to setup database connection, create views, create models. It is not a big deal but it was slowing me down.

I want to make SpeakWithNative.com usable by end of this month. My wife observed that I love learning new things but rarely use my knowledge. Learning is my excuse for not doing.

So with that observation, I have decided to switch SpeakWithNative.com back to CodeIgniter. I will still learn Laravel, but wait for version 4 and then start with smaller projects.

So I have 23 days left to finish SpeakWithNative.com. Right now people can login and sign up. Next step is to create all database tables and models.