3tilt Kickoff

3tilt Kickoff

Published on in 3tilt, docker, aws, learning & brain.

The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick.

I've been recording "3 Things I Learned Today" off and on for the past year. I was inspired by Raju Gandhi's (@looselytyped) NFJS talk "Learning to Learn" a few years ago. In May I gave a career day presentation to 7th graders at my wife's school and told them to start a "3tilt" (3 things I learned today) journal. The things you learn don't have to be traditionally academic: you could learn how to beat a difficult mission in Starcraft II or even the train schedule. The point of the exercise is reflection, gratitude, and continuous learning.

docker-compose is a good tool for dev testing
... especially if you're travelling down the microservices route where your app has several external resources. A few recommendations when using docker-compose:

  1. image > build in the docker-compose configuration file: i.e. build the images for the app and its resources outside docker-compose and reference those prebuilt images from its configuration. Play around a bit, you'll see I'm right.

  2. upgrade to docker-compose v 1.5.0 or greater so you can use variable substitution in your image references

  3. remember that your links and environment are injected at docker "run" time, you can use the same images for testing and production with different environments

create links between Elastic Beanstalk environments
... much like docker-compose allows you to create links between containers, Elastic Beanstalk let's you create links between environments: simply create an env.yaml file in the root directory of your application (more precisely the root dir where you will call the eb cli) and follow AWS's always sensible randomized configuration file format.

stories are powerful
... I grabbed Remapping Your Mind off the "New Non-Fiction" shelf of my local library when I returned Felicia Day's excellent memoir You're Never Weird on the Internet (almost). I love the brain and usually read any book with the words "synapse", "mind", "neuroscience", etc. on the cover. This book makes a compelling case for the position stories in medicine. The authors use a plethora of techniques ranging from NLP to Native American spirit quests to help patients recover from acute medical conditions. A real testament to the power of the mind and the true physiology of the brain.

-- Josh Waitzkin The Art of Learning