How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To | HBR


There’s that project you’ve left on the backburner – the one with the deadline that’s growing uncomfortably near.  And there’s the client whose phone call you really should return – the one that does nothing but complain and eat up your valuable time.  Wait, weren’t you going to try to go to the gym more often this year?

Can you imagine how much less guilt, stress, and frustration you would feel if you could somehow just make yourself do the things you don’t want to do when you are actually supposed to do them?  Not to mention how much happier and more effective you would be?

The good news and its very good news is that you can get better about not putting things off, if you use the right strategy.  Figuring out which strategy to use depends on why you are procrastinating in the first place.

Read More: How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To | Harvard Business Review.

The NSA Is Funding a Project to Roll All Programming Languages Into One | Gizmodo


Why bother having to learn HTML5, JavaScript, PHP, CSS and XML, when you could just learn one? Well, thats exactly what an NSA-funded project at Carnegie Mellon University seeks to achieve.The “polyglot” programming language is called Wyvern—the name comes from a a mythical dragon-like reature with two legs instead of four—and is designed to help unify the way apps and websites are created.

READ: The NSA Is Funding a Project to Roll All Programming Languages Into One | Gizmodo

The Largest Makerspace On The Planet Opens In Columbus, Ohio | TechCrunch


Announced as far back as January, the efforts of founder Alex Bandar, COO Casey McCarty and Shop/Production Manger Matt Hatcher have finally come to fruition; the Columbus Idea Foundry — a 65,000 square ft. “makerspace” in the heart of Columbus, Ohio — is open in its brand new location.

READ MORE: The Largest Makerspace On The Planet Opens In Columbus, Ohio | TechCrunch

LEGO Car Fueled by Air Drives Into History | PCMag.com


What started more than 60 years ago as a children’s building-block toy has turned into a technological tool, most recently used to design a plastic car fueled by air.

More than 500,000 LEGO bricks were used to build Steve Sammartino and Raul Oaida’s “Super Awesome Micro Project”: a drivable LEGO car. Read more: LEGO Car Fueled by Air Drives Into History | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

Support Ever, Jane: The Virtual World of Jane Austen by Judy L. Tyrer |Kickstarter


The Ever, Jane Kickstarter project is ~$14,000 short of its $100,000 goal with only 51 hours to go @ 6pm MST Friday, November 29th. You can support the project by pledging as low as $1.00!!!

Ever, Jane is a virtual world that allows people to role-play in Regency Period England. Similar to traditional role playing games, we advance our character through experience, but that is where the similarities end. Ever, Jane is about playing the actual character in the game, building stories.  Our quests are derived from player’s actions and stories. And  we gossip rather than swords and magic to demolish our enemies and aid our friends.

Support Ever, Jane: The Virtual World of Jane Austen by Judy L. Tyrer | Kickstarter.

Primo Is An Arduino Robot That Teaches Kids Programming Logic Through Play [Kickstarter] | TechCrunch


Dan Shapiro’s Robot Turtles board game Kickstarter showed there is serious appetite for kids’ games that aren’t just fun to play with but also sneakily teach core coding principles. Instead of the $25,000 he was aiming for, Shapiro raised more than $630,000. Geeky moms and dads clearly have money, and will spend it on the right bit of educational kit.

With that kind of Kickstarter community response, it’s pretty likely we’re set to see a wave of educational toys doing cool fun stuff with programming principles. To wit, meet Primo: a physical programming interface that teaches children programming logic while they control the movements of an Arduino-powered robot.

Read: Primo Is An Arduino Robot That Teaches Kids Programming Logic Through Play | TechCrunch.

Smithsonian now lets you view artifacts in 3D | CNET News


Smithsonian X 3D

You can now take a 3D peek at several famous historical artifacts thanks to a project from the Smithsonian Institution.

Launched on Wednesday, the Smithsonian X 3D Web site serves up a collection of 3D images of artifacts digitally scanned by the museum through a partnership with Autodesk. You canexplore the artifacts in detail by manipulating their images via mouse on your computer or via finger on a supported touch-screen device.

Read: Smithsonian now lets you view artifacts in 3D | Internet & Media – CNET News.

Related: The Smithsonian Is Uploading Its Lost Treasures to the Internet | Gizmodo

Facebook Launches Open Academy To Give Kids College Credit For Open Source Contributions | TechCrunch


A perfect GPA isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Advancing an open source project. To help computer science students prepare for jobs (and boost its own recruiting efforts) Facebook today publicly launched Open Academy. The partnership with premier CS universities sets up a special class where students get college credit for contributing to open source projects.

Read: Facebook Launches Open Academy To Give Kids College Credit For Open Source Contributions | TechCrunch.

A Glowing Book That Illuminates More Than Just Your Brain | Gizmodo


Max Gunawan’s wonderful Lumio accordion book lamp has been popping up on design sites for the past year or so. But after a successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year, it’s finally available for purchase, bringing its soft glow to home libraries around the world

Read: A Glowing Book That Illuminates More Than Just Your Brain | Gizmodo

Book Lamp

Seven Ways To Use GitHub That Aren’t Coding | ReadWrite


GitHub is so often touted as a tool for coding projects that it’s easy to forget just how useful a resource it is for everything else.

At the heart of GitHub are two collaborative functions—forking and branching—that aren’t exclusive to coding. Forking means to create a clone of somebody else’s work for remixing. Branching is a way for each person in a group to create a temporary clone for tandem editing, and then push those updates back to the group project again.

While many of GitHub’s capabilities require knowledge of Git…forking and branching can both be done with nothing more than a GitHub account and a few clicks. GitHub has the additional benefit of a liberal use policy, so you are in complete control of anything you upload there.

The 7 ways discussed:

  1. Travel Logging
  2. Musical Composition
  3. Remixing Recipes
  4. Open Source Font Editing
  5. Data Visualization For Journalists
  6. Writing and Blogging
  7. Legal Documents

Read: Seven Ways To Use GitHub That Aren’t Coding | ReadWrite.

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