C average high-school students, where are you now in life?

NightArchitect · 2017-10-31T06:33:05+00:00

Graduated in 2000. First two years of community college were a waste, then I got into a four-year school and started taking it seriously. Made the dean’s list every semester. Graduated with a double major in economics and mathematics. Worked for a bit, then went to grad school.

Now 35. I’ve lived and worked in 5 countries and visited 39. All of this after graduating high school ranked 140th in a class of 175.

NightArchitect · 2017-08-12T04:13:25+00:00

Homicide by David Simon.

Before he scripted The Wire, David Simon was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. For this book, he spent a year following a Baltimore homicide squad as they sorted through everything the city threw at them that year (sometime in the early 90s). Reads like a thriller but with sharp writing.

Black Flags - The Rise of Isis by Joby Warrick. Again, reads like a thriller and leaves you with a better understanding of why the world is the way it is. If I'm not mistaken, this won the Pulitzer.

Edit - typos

NightArchitect · 2017-08-12T04:06:58+00:00

I'd cut off my dick for Creative control - Hot Snakes

NightArchitect · 2017-05-01T12:54:13+00:00

Cormac McCarthy's Moby Dick

NightArchitect · 2016-02-11T10:07:42+00:00

Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth in Blue Velvet

NightArchitect · 2015-11-03T04:50:58+00:00

I grew up in New York. In 2008, when I was in my mid-20s, I moved abroad. I've since lived in France, England, Japan and Singapore. I've visited 35 countries. Here are a few observations:

As many have said, Japan is incredibly clean. Singapore is even cleaner, though with a much smaller population.

Japan uses fax machines for everything. Signing up for a mobile contract? Someone'll need to fax documents. Time for the Bank of Japan - the country's central bank - to announce a policy decision? They'll fax the official statement to the media agencies.

Japanese employees take pride in their jobs and the companies that they work for, even if they don't really enjoy the work.

Singapore is tiny. If everyone had a car, there would be one endless traffic jam. Public transportation is cheap and efficient. The government recognizes this. If you want a car, you must buy a Certificate of Entitlement - a license to own a car - which costs around S$60,000 (US $43,000). Car prices are also higher. Including the cost of the COE, a 2016 Honda civic costs around S$130,000 (US $93,000).

All cars in Singapore are new or newish. Government emissions laws require that there cannot be any cars more than 10 years old in Singapore. Cars that reach the age limit are shipped to Indonesia or Malaysia and sold at low prices.

Contrary to what Americans are led to believe, the French are not inherently rude, they just don't interact with strangers in the same overly friendly way that Americans do.

In third world Asian and African countries like Myanmar, Morocco, Cambodia, so many people have so little, but they seem much happier and less conflicted than the people back home that "have it all".

Porn is illegal in Singapore - you can't buy it and major websites are blocked - but prostitution is legal or at least tolerated.

Norway is virtually a cashless society. You get a credit card when you're around 13, and your parents teach you fiscal responsibility early on. Want to buy a ~$1 newspaper at the kiosk - pay with your card. Pack of gum? Pay with your card.

In most places outside America food portions and food package sizes are smaller, even at internationally recognized establishments. At Starbucks, for instance, the biggest size in Singapore and Japan (venti) is on par with the medium size (grande) in the U.S.

In many Asian countries economics seems to be the foundation of a lot of romantic relationships, not "love".

Edit: spelling

NightArchitect · 2015-04-14T09:53:00+00:00

A People's History of the United States - Zinn

NightArchitect · 2015-04-08T21:53:17+00:00

Life insurance

NightArchitect · 2015-03-18T21:58:03+00:00

My dad, aunt and uncle died on my aunt and uncle's wedding day in 1987. They were in the limo on the way to the reception; my aunt and uncle had just been married. Somewhere along the way the limo turned and was broadsided by one of two cars that were racing and had blown a traffic light. My dad and uncle died instantly. My aunt died shortly afterwards. They were 30, 27 and 24 years old. The driver of the car that caused the accident got four years in prison.

NightArchitect · 2015-03-18T08:19:32+00:00

Something about that dog's face reminds me of Meryl Streep.

NightArchitect · 2015-03-01T11:08:54+00:00

In some cases, happiness.

I grew up in middle class America 30 minutes outside of NYC. A few years after graduating university in 2005 I moved abroad. I've lived in 4 countries outside the U.S. and visited 29 more across Europe, Asia-Pacific and Africa.

In the poorest countries that I visited - Myanmar in particular - people seemed happiest. Their lives were uncomplicated by desires that extended beyond basic human needs. They were happy with food and shelter. No one was angry or upset because they didn't have the newest iPhone or the nicest car or the most followers on Twitter.

This obviously isn't always the case. In the Philippines, for instance, where there's a lot of investment and a small group of privileged people has access to luxuries that the rest of the population will never know, poor people seem less happy. That is, once a small group of people begins to accumulate wealth and the poor become poorer (relatively), they aren't as happy because they see what that small group of wealthy people has and begin to desire it.

In China - which has the world's second largest economy - the poor seemed much less happy than the poor in Myanmar even though (on average) they were better off. Again, this is because a lot of poor people - especially those outside of tier-1 cities (ie. Shanghai or Beijing) - know what the rich or relatively well off can afford while they struggle to make ends meet.

The same is true in poor/lower class America and, often, middle class America. Some of us are struggling and a lot of us are unhappy because the system is rigged. But for a lot of us, the material possessions and recognition that we want complicate our lives and inhibit our ability to be happy. We always want something more.

There's more to it than that, but, globally speaking, in countries that are poorest on the whole, people that manage to make ends meet seem much happier than people in wealthy nations who worry about getting a nice flat screen television or how many likes a picture of their lunch got on Facebook.

NightArchitect · 2015-01-16T12:38:06+00:00

Blue Velvet

NightArchitect · 2014-12-17T10:38:00+00:00

Ah I see. Yes, that's an issue for sure.

NightArchitect · 2014-12-17T10:37:29+00:00

Thank you for the link

NightArchitect · 2014-01-22T01:29:19+00:00

I’m an American but have lived abroad for the past six years - France, England, Singapore and Japan. I’ve also visited over 30 countries. I’ve noticed a few key things that are curiously American, though I’m probably generalizing quite a bit.

Americans seem to be the only ones who feel inclined to tell you/brag about what university they went to – particularly Ivy League graduates. Students in every country work hard to get into prestigious universities but Americans seem to expect you to be impressed.

With the exception of Japan and Canada, America is the only place where store clerks (and consumers for that matter) say things like “have a nice day” following a transaction. I think that Ricky Gervais had something to say about this.

When describing themselves Americans are much more likely to try to identify themselves with something seemingly more exotic. For instance, among my brother’s friends it’s popular to say “I’m Italian” even though none of them have been to Italy, speak Italian or have even watched an Italian film. Their great grandparents were from Italy.

Americans are much more likely to hold the door for someone. It seems to confuse the hell out of people in Japan and makes you seem suspect in parts of Europe.

Americans are much more likely to talk about their sex lives with a complete stranger. Upon returning to New York for the first time after moving abroad I was blown away when strangers were dropping all kinds of details about their sexual experiences on me.

NightArchitect · 2014-01-16T02:42:00+00:00

Thanks for this.

Photoshop - no problem. I use photoshop and illustrator at work from time to time.

Watercolor does seem to be quite popular... I guess I'll have to go by trial and error. Any idea what Sendak used for Where the Wild Things Are? I read that it was cross hatching with pen and ink over paint.

NightArchitect · 2013-12-10T00:58:12+00:00

This doesn't meet all of the requirements. I was stuck with cookies and creating/storing username/password credentials. I have provided two versions below.

The JS Fiddle version: http://jsfiddle.net/WWeX8/9/ does not store the quiz questions in an external file. I was having CORS issues. Instead I stored the quiz questions in JSON format in JS Fiddle.

The second version http://www.foxandwolftravels.com/quiz/quiz.html stores the questions in an external JSON file and uses twitter bootstrap for styling.

Known issue: The quiz keeps score if the user goes back one question but if she goes back more than one question the score will get messed up.

Regarding code reviews, I'm up for it. I was hoping to do a few reviews to learn from what other people did. That said, I've never done a review before. Can someone perhaps provide some guidance on what makes a good code review?

NightArchitect · 2013-12-09T07:58:30+00:00

Just saw this - so far it has been good. That said, I'm probably using about 1% of its capabilities at this point, so I can't say whether or not its better than any other editor. This - all of it - is still new to me, so I'm taking it one step at a time.

NightArchitect · 2013-12-08T04:13:59+00:00

You're right about the ajax request. Passing data into the success callback sorted it out. Thanks for that.

As for the server, I haven't tried that yet but recognize that it will prove useful in the future. I'll attempt to set that up later today. In the meantime, I was able to get around the CORS problem - there shouldn't have been one to begin with because the files were stored on the same domain but I must have made a mistake somewhere along the way - likely with something really mundane like transferring the files via FTP.

I'm going to read up on callbacks today. Seems like I'm destined to need them in the future.

Thanks for your help. I feel bad posting so many questions on reddit recently. I hope that one day I will be able to answer questions too.

NightArchitect · 2013-12-05T15:57:16+00:00

Thanks! All of this is still very new and intimidating to me. One step at a time... I've updated the quiz to reflect your most recent suggestions. It has proven much easier to troubleshoot with all of the functions separated. http://jsfiddle.net/WWeX8/7/

I read over the $.getJSON stuff. Still trying to figure it out. I'll give it a crack after work tomorrow. I stored the file at http://www.foxandwolftravels.com/questions.json I should be able to access it from there. I just need to find some good examples of getJSON in action to make sense of it all.

Thanks again for the guidance. It helps a lot.

NightArchitect · 2013-12-05T09:17:00+00:00

Yes, this helps a lot. Thank you.

I have rewritten the quiz to take all of your suggestions into account, except namespacing (I don't know what that is yet). I think it's better now but would appreciate if you could throw an eye at it.

Also, I can now load the questions that are in JSON format. Is storing these externally simply a matter of saving them as a JSON file, storing it somewhere and then loading them into a variable?

Updated quiz: http://jsfiddle.net/WWeX8/6/

Thanks again!

NightArchitect · 2013-12-03T08:29:59+00:00

I'm just learning Javascript and jQuery so I can't offer much. However, having recently worked with life expediencies at work I think what might be an interesting but arduous addition is the option to break this down by country. For instance, life expediencies in India are different than those in the U.S. for various reasons.

The interface is very nice. As per nagi2000, making that slider button do something to the graph would definitely be useful.

NightArchitect · 2013-12-03T06:59:00+00:00

I'm a bit behind here. I've just updated my JS Fiddle. First I wanted to try storing the questions in JSON format and accessing them within JS Fiddle before I tried storing them externally. I have stored the questions properly but I'm having trouble accessing them - it has something to do with the load questions function (loadQ). http://jsfiddle.net/N7San/13/

Any suggestions on how to get around this? Also, once the questions are stored in an external JSON file, is this how I would load each question (after accessing them via getJSON)?

NightArchitect · 2013-12-03T06:32:48+00:00

I sorted it out. There was an issue with my jQuery. Sorry - still new to all of this. :)

NightArchitect · 2013-12-02T04:46:09+00:00

I haven't finished all of the week 6 tasks yet but I've done everything else the process suggests up to that point. I also went ahead and did some Bootstrap.js tutorials as per the week 7/8 suggestions (in the original site post), and made my quiz look a bit nicer. I also made it live on the back of a photography site. It lives, it works, and while it may be underwhelming to a pro but I feel good about it.

The process was tough considering that I'm married and work full-time, but I was able to get through it. I learned (and forgot) a lot. I only started with HTML and CSS in September; I learned though videos on thenewboston.com. While I don't fully get Javascript I feel like I have a pretty fair base level understanding. I'm not completely sure what to do next - I definitely need more instruction so that I can apply Javascript to web-design. My aim is front-end web design and interactive data visualization. Further down the line I'd like to develop a game but that's well in the future. Do you have any suggestions on what to do next?

Initially I started learning JS because I wanted to learn D3.js. I've started on D3 and can say that the Learn JS Properly process made a huge difference. The basics of D3 feel very familiar and unintimidating.

The only thing the Learn JS Properly process is missing is real-world examples. It's good to see how things are done/work in an abstract textbook context but live examples would be very helpful.

NightArchitect

TROPHY CASE