Also see my headstands around the world.
Also see my headstands around the world.
Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.
– Chuck Palahniuk (the author of Fight Club & more)
My work is a 45 minute drive from home. That’s 1.5 hours per day (7.5 hours per week) that I spend in the car traveling to and from work. After working at this place for a year, I was sick of the radio playing the same songs and the radio show hosts boring me. So I found that I could use this time to listen to audiobooks, lectures and seminars. These audiobooks are usually between 3 and 15 hours – so on average, I can listen to a book per week. That’s about 50 books per year. All this, in time which I would have achieved nothing (other than driving to work, which I still do anyway).
So I’d get through about 50 books per year in the time I drive to and from work, plus I’d be listening whenever I do laborious work which doesn’t require me to think much, especially during some of the house renovation work (painting, filling gaps, sanding floorboards, jackhammering, digging etc.). Some weekends, I’d listen to more than 20 hours of content.
The Slight Edge audiobook by Jeff Olson was one of the first books I listened to, which catalyzed my efforts; although audiobooks allow me to get through a lot more than the 10 pages per night that they recommend!
TED talks are a great starting point to find out which topics interest you and what you’d like to learn more about. If you find a talk interesting, look into the speaker and see if they have released a book relating to their talk. I downloaded a bunch of TED talks using the programs Miro and TED Downloader – I then put these video files on my phone so I could listen to them while I was in the car.
Contact me if you’re having trouble finding something – I usually manage to get access to most things for free and I might be able to lend you some of the ones I have. I believe that education should be free to those who are willing to put the effort in to learning!
This page will list some of the books and recordings which I’ve been through and would recommend to others.
I’ve been through hundreds of books and courses – below are some resources which I’d recommend. Read the blurb, watch the sample and decide whether you’re interested. I encourage you to contact me if you have any recommendations for me!
This book started my motivation to read and learn more. I listened to the audiobook version which is less than 4 hours. The main message of this book is that the small, seemingly irrelevant decisions you make each day compound over time to make a big difference. Below is a review of the book.
How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk convinced me that his book might be worth reading. The book broadened my perspective with regard to creativity being a different kind of intelligence and that creative skills and people are important. The TED talk is below.
I first read this book when I was in primary school and some of the ideas undoubtedly molded my life. I recently listened to an audio seminar version of the book and a sequel, ‘Living the 7 Habits’. Wikipedia has a good short breakdown of the 7 habits. Below is a review of the book.
The surprising truth about what motivates us
How to Change Things When Change Is Hard /Â Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die / How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work
How to Get Things Right
The Story of Success, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Below is a review of the book.
A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life
Blurb from Wikipedia:Â Motivational and self-help experts in personal development, including Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy have based their techniques on Maxwell Maltz. Many of the psychological methods of training elite athletes are based on the concepts in Psycho-Cybernetics as well.
Below is a review of the book.
A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills
By Professor Steven Novella, M.D. (Yale School of Medicine)
Available on The Great Courses, Amazon and Audible
By Prof. Jeremy Wolfe. From Fall 2014.
Available on MIT OpenCourseWare or download the MP3s from archive.org.
Also available: OCW Scholar course by Prof. John Gabrieli on MIT OpenCourseWare.
By Professor Paul Bloom.
Available on Open Yale courses and YouTube.
See TED.com
Lessons from the Greatest Speeches in History By Professor John R. Hale, Ph.D., University of Cambridge, University of Louisville
Available from The Great Courses.
By Professor Sam Wang, Ph.D. Princeton University
Available from The Great Courses.
Professor Hannah B. Harvey, Ph.D. Professional Storyteller.
Available from The Great Courses.
Professor Dalton Kehoe, Ph.D. York University.
Available from The Great Courses.
Joel Sartore, National Geographic Photographer.
Available from The Great Courses.
Professor Jason M. Satterfield, Ph.D. University of California, San Francisco.
Available from The Great Courses and YouTube.
Look him up on YouTube – especially his stuff on Goals and Sales.
See his books How To Win Friends And Influence People (review below) and The Art of Public Speaking
I like to think that I see the world from a different perspective.
I was inspired in 2014 by the Travel Photography course by Joel Sartore.
Also see my handstands around the world.
Mouse-over images for captions, click to enlarge.
Also see my handstands around the world.
This section is most relevant to Australians, but there’s likely an equivalent for your country – look around! These are the best I know of, as at December 2015.
I shopped around extensively and there are two cards which I found to be the best value and I have used them for more than 4 years – they’re very similar; one is a credit card and the other is a savings account with a debit card. I use both – the credit card where it’s accepted and the debit card to get cash out of ATMs worldwide. Both cost $0 to set up, charge no annual fee, have an excellent currency conversion rate and none of the fees mentioned below.
When using these cards, you should always select to use the local currency when paying (this way the currency conversion is performed by your card instead of their machine, giving you a much better rate).
Using these cards could save you up to $365 per 5000 euros (example below) – that’s not even taking the fees into account. Using my recommended cards is better value than OzForex, Travelex and any other bank, travel money or credit card I’ve seen. Contact me if you think you know of a better deal!
The BankWest Zero Platinum MasterCard appears to offer similar benefits to the 28 degrees card, with the addition of complimentary international travel insurance for trips up to 6 months in duration. I use my Suncorp Platinum card for this, but the “$0 annual fee for life” offer wasn’t available when I was looking for my parents, so I’ve put them on the BankWest card.
Continue reading International travel money and currency conversion
I’ll eventually write a description of this project from 2011…
For now we have the description in the exhibition booklet (#28, page 22) and the images below.
Here’s a video of the musical plasma arc from 05/03/2011 (you would probably want to right click, save link as…):Â video-2011-03-05-00-16-18.mp4 27MB 1:03
General photos:
Photos of electronics: