Mid-June update

It's been a busy month on the home front.  I fell behind on CS100.1x and decided to put that effort on hold.

Here is a wonderful article about goal setting and how it may not be optimal: http://jamesclear.com/goals-systems

The synopsis of the article is to focus on a system (i.e. weekly blogging) rather than having a singular focus on a goal.  This would have helped me, more than you can imagine, in my previous life as a competitive distance runner.

We^D^D Monday Night Hack #16 - N/A

I reached the anti-climactic end of the Google foobar challenge.  Quite unfortunate.  Last night, I was working on a level 3 problem (spring_cleaning).  I had 4 of 5 test cases passing and, fast forward a day, had a good hunch idea on why the last test case was failing.

I found out after the fact that Google was using this challenge as a recruiting tool.  Brilliant!  I honestly had no idea.  I am not sure how it works, but I would assume that breaking level 5 in the predefined period of time might indicate an exceptional computer scientist - at which point they'd engage their army of recruiters :P  I am humbled by those that can pull that off.

Tomorrow, I will be participating in Qualcomm's (my employer) first ever Data Mining Competition.  I'll spend the rest of the evening working on CS100.1x in preparation.

Wednesday Night Hack #15 - foobar and CS100.1x

Tonight, I spent time on Google's foobar coding challenge.  It was good opportunity to hone my Python skills.  I'll update once I crack level 3.

I have also registered and started another massively online course.  This time CS100.1x, Introduction to Big Data with Apache Spark offered by BerkeleyX.  Time commitment for this one looks minimal. The syllabus estimates 25 hours over 5 weeks.  I'll update with a recap afterwards.