We deny it. We think the adjective frugal is a polished euphemism for cheap.
There is a difference.
Unfortunately, you have to be frugal first to understand the difference.

There are things you need and there are things you just want.
Desire is the magic currency that advertisers love to create out of thin air.
It’s one of the dark arts. (only half-joking)

Desire leads to consumption.
Consumption gives you an initial high, but it wears off sooner than you’d expect.
Just look back at any of your last few gadget buys – how long did the awesome last? :
A week?, 2 weeks?…

PROTIP : Seek out real lasting value, whenever you encounter the need to acquire something.
Used things often do the job just as well as brand new things.
NEW Cars are a notoriously terrible investment that come to mind.

PROTIP 2: When in doubt, invest in Experiences over ‘Stuff‘. Travelling to new places is always a good bet.

Being frugal doesn’t mean buying the cheapest item on sale.
Get the item that just does the job, without compromising on bare minimum quality requirements.
The real-world difference between that item and the fanciest brand is a single handful of percentage points.

Caveat: NEVER skimp on safety, especially when your loved ones are at stake.
Caveat 2: Don’t be a CHEAPBASTARD. Nobody likes you guys/girls either. :p

P.S: Being frugal in your 20′s makes you a ‘millionaire-next-door‘ sooner than your friends who partied through it.
Compound interest is sufficiently indistinguishable from magic to me, on most days.

Well, like many others out there, AI was a black hole for me during college.
It never managed to hold my attention despite my fascination with all things geeky/obscure/arcane.
Or maybe I was just really lazy to pay attention back in the day. AI qualifies as hard CS.

Anyway, this latest Stanford gift offers you the chance to learn at the feet of the AI master himself : Peter  Norvig,
That’s reason enough for me to click Signup and dust off my 2nd Edition of AIMA (Amazon, Flipkart)

Join me for some really hard CS-ey fun if you’re curious about theoretical CS and seek more than a wikipedia article’s worth of knowledge.

I found a list of Course prerequisites in a Reddit post .
You can get them at Khan Academy’s Youtube[1] channel[2] or if you’d prefer to have the videos offline as well, PirateBay has the cookies .

If you’re significantly smarter than yours truly, sign up for the ML-class too. (I’m giving this one a pass, this fall)

P.S: Hurry! Enrollment for the Fall 2011 class closes on October 10, 2011.

I stayed up all night.
Then plowed my way through the following day without napping.

And Voila! I now regularly sleep at 12-1 am or so and wake up at 7:30am like an atomic clock.

Its been steady so far for a few weeks now. I wanted to wait a bit before shouting it while running through the town square, figuratively speaking.
I can’t describe how glad i am, to feel the sun in my face and in my room, after months of a vampire-like life.

Coupled with late evening weightlifting-based workouts, i’ve banished my DSPS demons for good, this time.

So, for others out there struggling with Insomnia , DSPS , or other Circadian Rhythm interference without a medical reason, besides a late-night Internet/Tv addiction,

There is always HOPE .

Edit: This post has been lying in my drafts since September 2009.
I don’t even feel like counting the months; so i’m hitting publish now. :-/

And so things roll on till it reaches critical trivial mass, where I can just shrug it off as another of my insignificant failures. I certainly dont seem to be learning anything from this particular exercise.

++
UPDATE: This post has been lying in my Drafts folder for over 20 days now. I’m kinda fed up with talking about what the next great thing is going to be. I’m already sounding like ole Bill Gates and his inane predictions. Wasn’t he the one who predicted that the future is in web apps? like 2 weeks ago?

*shakes head*

Well, back on topic; I am now gainfully employed by Logicmanse Solutions : a bootstrapped web development and consulting shop HQ’ed in Trivandrum, Kerala. (no, not in the TechnoPark; there’s nothing park-like about THAT place. I ought to call it technoZoo, with all its caged and tame beasts. :p)

As for the job description, I’d say I do just about anything just as long as its not the same thing I did 5 minutes ago. Any side-effects, you ask? A LOT less twittering and social media chatter from this slightly tamer geek.

Until the next time I feel like whining to the world,
Goodbye and happy hacking.
(hey, its my blog. I’ll print goddamned whatever I want.)