Category Archives: Life

Stockstream – Twitch Channel

Watch live video from StockStream on www.twitch.tv

StockStreamLive is a social experiment billed as “The worlds first cooperative multiplayer Stock Market game using real money.”. Mike Roberts, the creator put $50,000 into an account on Robinhood which stocks being voted on by the channel’s chat. Think Twitch Plays Pokemon but using real money in a stock market. The experiment ends when the account reaches a balance of $25,000, so a loss of half the starting amount.

While I don’t participate in chat for the channel, I routinely monitor the portfolio and twitter feed @stockstream. It is interesting to see the gains and losses that Mike is getting with this experiment. Currently at the time of publication Mike is up over $1,000.

0% Day

An article I read online recently stuck out to me with the author, David Wehle’s process to completing his game.

Whether it’s just answering an email or doing a small color change on a texture, I always try to do something on my project everyday…… Usually I get pumped about what I’ve done, and suddenly I’m motivated to work on the harder stuff.

No matter what, he found something to work on and accomplish each day. Doing this along with limiting my scope, it will be much easier to release the side projects and get feedback. In the end I will feel more accomplished because something was actually released and not just a permanent work in progress.

Scope

Over the course of working on my hobby projects I have always run into roadblocks in trying to complete them. One main problem I run into is the scope of my projects. I have the habit of trying to make the end result over complicated so I have trouble completing what I want the project to turn out into. One thing I have to get better is road mapping my projects. This doesn’t mean releasing an unfinished project, it means releasing a project that has reached its first main milestone goal and then working on the next step with feedback from the end user. Most of the projects will never be completed without bugs, as they are inevitable. But releasing a project it better than not releasing it at all.

freeCodeCamp

I first came across freeCodeCamp late last year while trying to find another resource to help learn for a project I have been planning, but now I am getting more into using the site to learn. Currently, I am on challenge 119 on their roadmap to learning.

Some of what I am learning is a refresher but a lot of the material is new to me. In my experience, I haven’t been a big user of jQuery and advanced CSS. Most of my experience has come from HTML and PHP. Most of the design work was usually completed by someone else.

I have recently been told to get more involved in the open source community and for me to get more involved I need to learn more code to help in other ways other than support and documentation.

Here’s to completing some of my projects in the coming weeks/months, so I can share them with you.

2MASS J23062928-0502285

The study of the stars and space has always fascinated me.

Earlier today, there was an announcement about 4 more exoplanets being found near TRAPPIST-1 also known as 2MASS J23062928-0502285. The fact that some of those have the potential to be in a habitable zone makes this discovery great. Knowing that there is a possibility that there could be other life out there.

In the future, one of my planned purchases is a telescope to be better able to see what is out there.

Unfortunately, I am unable to witness the next Solar eclipse on February 26, 2017.