May 2023 - Welcome Back
Introduction
Hey everyone!
I know. It’s been a minute. Without really intending to, I missed my newsletter last month. I won’t expound on it here, but I’ll just say that I’ve been dealing with personal loss lately.
Instead of going down that route (a downer), I want the subject of this newsletter to be on “Resiliency” and “Gratitude.” I think that every problem we face and every obstacle is an opportunity to practice fortitude and mental resilience.
You would be an extremely unique person on this planet if you never suffered loss during your lifetime. Even the most wealthy deal with their loved ones passing away (let alone the problems the rest of us deal with every day).
When these waves hit, it’s important to focus on what matters the most: Family, friends, and your personal mental and physical health.
If you haven’t already, try sending a text to the people that matter most to you. It can be something simple like “Hey, I was thinking about you. How are you doing?” or “You really mean a lot to me. I appreciate you.”
Those sound really cheesy at face value, but I’d encourage you to stop for a second and think about exactly how you would feel if the people you care about sent you a message like that. I’m going to guess that it would feel pretty great.
Just like happiness can’t be a goal in and of itself, neither can “being resilient.” You become resilient by overcoming the problems you face with the character you shape every day. Practicing gratitude like will keep you centered on what’s really important in your life and actually increases your resiliency.
—
Starting over these coming summer months, this newsletter will be taking a slight pivot as I gravitate more towards sharing articles and insights I write during the month. Don’t worry though - I’ll still share cool resources I’ve found.
I’m going to write about what’s going on in tech as well as my thoughts on it. I may also write about my other hobbies (including investing).
I’m taking a wild guess that you followed me for a reason and that you will want to hang around. I’m only getting started with my goals in life, and I want you to be along for the ride to share in it.
Thank you again for subscribing to my newsletter.
—
Nathan ☕️
Books
“When the Heavens Went on Sale” by Ashlee Vance
There has been an absolute explosion of space-oriented tech startups in the last few years, not to mention SpaceX. In his new book that released this month, Ashlee Vance breaks down the history and current state of this slice of the tech industry in a really entertaining way. I think this is a must-read if you’re at all interested in this subject area.
“The Obstacle is the Way” by Ryan Holiday
I fully credit this book with giving me an “oomph” to start my coding bootcamp. It’s that profound if you’ve been the sort of person to need the courage to fix yourself firm and face obstacles head on. You can find a copy of it here or at most big book stores.
Code
The Ultimate ElectronJS Guide
I’ve spent a non-trivial amount of my life working with ElectronJS this year. If you haven’t heard of it, I can almost guarantee that you’ve used a desktop application on Mac or PC that was built using it.
This guide gives one of the best breakdowns I’ve found yet on what ElectronJS is, how it works, and how you should set it up for security and performance.
Interview Cake
I’ve subscribed to Interview Cake for about 3 years now (free tier - there’s no need to pay). You will get occasional emails with code challenges for you to complete in the language of your choice. For instance, this was yesterday’s:
You have a singly-linked list and want to check if it contains a cycle.
A singly-linked list is built with nodes, where each node has:
- node.next, the next node in the list
- node.value, the data held in the node (For example, if our linked list stores people in line at the movies, node.value might be the person's name)
For example:
class LinkedListNode(object):
def __init__(self, value):
self.value = value
self.next = None
A cycle occurs when a node’s next points back to a previous node in the list. The linked list is no longer linear with a beginning and end—instead, it cycles through a loop of nodes.
Write a function contains_cycle() that takes the first node in a singly-linked list and returns a boolean indicating whether the list contains a cycle.If this also piques your interest, you can sign up for these emails right here: https://www.interviewcake.com
Games
Welcome to Your Perfect Home (board game)
Some friends just introduced this game to me the other night. It’s surprisingly nuanced and is one part Qwixx, one part 1950s construction worker, and one part building 500 parks and pools to combo-multiply your points and stick it to your friends.
Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (video game)
This might be one of the best pieces of art I’ve ever experienced. It’s a brilliant piece in the open world gaming genre which makes it’s 2017 sibling (Breath of the Wild) look like a tech demo.
If you grew up playing Nintendo games and have even a small bit of love remaining for Legend of Zelda games, you should get and play this game.
Music
“Notes On A Conditional Form” by The 1975
This album came out in 2020, so it’s not new by any means. But I got super addicted to it this month and played it quite a lot. It has solid summer/beach vibes if that’s what you’re going for this June.
I’m Angry and I Want to Code
This is my playlist. Sometimes you just want to crank on something, you’re working on, you know?
People that work with me who subscribe to this newsletter, don’t read into this - I thought it was a catchy name and I just happened to be compiling the playlist while working on a pull request.
Videos
“What I learned from 100 days of rejection” by Jia Jiang
I don’t remember how I stumbled across this Ted Talk, but I laughed quite a bit and got a healthy reminder that rejection is not the enemy in life; I read a quote recently that goes, “If you’re afraid of failure, you’ll never accomplish anything in life.” I think that quote applies here, and I hope you’ll enjoy this talk too.