Why Being A Modern Polymath Is The New Normal
Polymath Advantage 1: Combining two or more skills can make you world-class.
Polymath Advantage 2: Most creative breakthroughs come via making atypical combinations of skills.
Polymath Advantage 3: It’s easier and faster than ever to become competent in a new skill.
Polymath Advantage 4: It’s easier than ever to pioneer a new field, industry, or skill set.
Polymath Advantage 5: It Future-proofs Your Career
Polymath Advantage 6: It Sets You Up To Solve More Complex Problems
Polymath Advantage 7: Being a polymath helps you stand out and compete in the global economy.

I think the “killer app” framework is the correct one. While there are many cutting-edge applications that technologists will find exciting (myself included), the major drivers of blockchain’s value are relatively narrow.

Amidst the hype-train of ICOs, “decentralizing the Internet,” and bullshit artists trying to hoist everything they can think of onto a blockchain, it’s instructive to take the 1000-foot view and remind ourselves of the big picture.

I argue there are four killer apps for blockchains:

Dark web and black market payments
Digital gold
Payments (macro and micro)
Tokenization

Preparation
Although I’m interested in machine learning positions, the positions at the five companies are slightly different in the title and the interviewing process. Three are machine learning engineer (LinkedIn, Google, Facebook), one is data engineer (Salesforce), and one is software engineer in general (Airbnb). Therefore I needed to prepare for three different areas: coding, machine learning, and system design.

I mainly used Leetcode and Geeksforgeeks for practicing, but Hackerrank and Lintcode are also good places. I spent several weeks going over common data structures and algorithms, then focused on areas I wasn’t too familiar with, and finally did some frequently seen problems. Due to my time constraints I usually did two problems per day.

Ramit Sethi has called this the “Briefcase Technique,” saying that the best job applicants wait for a moment right after the pleasantries have ended and the basic information about the position has been explained. It is here, after they have answered just enough questions to establish comfort and trust, that they reveal how much research they have done prior to showing up, by explaining all the things they’ve learned about the business, how they intend to improve it and exactly why they’re the right person for the job. This move, done politely but confidently, immediately separates them from all the other potential hires.

How to add contrast in a non-destructive, easy way.
How to sharpen an image using some keyboard shortcuts to see what exactly is being sharpened.
How to edit the color of certain parts of a sunset or landscape image.
A way to clean up skin, although I'm not convinced I'll use this method.
How to change the color of anything, especially if you have a piece of clothing you want to suit the other colors in the image.
How to apply a trendy faded effect.
How to digitally relight an image.
How to convert an image to black and white while still being able to change the contrast of the image.
How to apply lens flares to an image, even if you don't have any in the image.
How to apply cinematic colors and tones to your images, just like in the movies.

I want to clarify my priorities
by defining my goals and the path to reach them.

The DIY Toolkit has been especially designed for development practitioners to invent, adopt or adapt ideas that can deliver better results.

This updated 2018 list features 10 websites that offer the best coding challenges and resources to help new and intermediate developers improve their skills, prepare for interviews, and progress in their careers. The ordering of the list is based on level of difficulty (beginner to advanced).

Due to my belief in learning through self-discovery and my ongoing creative evolution, I've long put off doing any tutorials. However, after making pixel art for over 3 years I've established many solid techniques worth laying out in a concrete fashion. While I'm excited by the prospect of helping others with my experience, I still urge artists to explore things their own way. The wonderful thing about art is the unlimited number of solutions to a problem. I offer you solutions that have worked for me and I hope they work for you, but I will be even more thrilled if you discover a better solution along the way.

Like a swatch book, HSB provides a great scale for finding a color. It can be useful for pinning down a match for the color you’ve seen in your head, on a screen, or in the real world. Like a painter’s palette, RGB provides a great space for mixing color. It can be used to create organic and harmonious relationships between two or more colors in a palette.

In this tutorial you’ll learn about using gradients on the web. I’ll give you some examples, some exercises (such as how to create gradients for borders), and I’ll also throw in some useful resources which will make creating gradients a lot easier.

"User experience is the net sum of every interaction a person has with a company, be it marketing collateral, a customer service call, or the product or service itself. It is affected by the company’s vision and the beliefs it holds and its practices, as well as the service or product’s purpose and the value it holds in a person’s life."

"Every detail of a company and its product says something about it. User experience strategy and design ensures that these messages are put forth with intention and purpose. Design extends into each and every detail, and each and every detail can indeed be designed."

"The job of a designer, just like that of a writer, is to twist and stretch and shape a conceptualized piece of work over and over again until it becomes the masterpiece the world needs it to be."

"A user's experience belongs to the user. An experience cannot be designed. It can, however, be influenced. A designer’s job is to be the influencer."

Carbon is the design system for IBM Cloud products. It is a series of individual styles, components, and guidelines used for creating unified UI.

Carbon components is supported in the following browsers:

IE11
IE Edge latest
Firefox latest
Chrome latest
Safari latest

Nagging is the dispiriting, unpleasant, counter-productive but wholly understandable and poignant version of a hugely noble ambition: the desire to change other people.

Wedged between boomers and millennials, Gen X has been the quiet, get-things-done generation nobody paid much attention to. Now they’re getting pushed out of their jobs—and boy, is Boston gonna miss them. —By Kris Frieswick

The beginning of hand-lettering journey, I started by tracing fonts to familiarize myself with typography. I started with the Learn Lettering course with Seanwes and did some other one’s as well.

In Learn Lettering, Sean McCabe suggested to trace fonts, and suggested some basic ones as well. I set out into the woods (you can do it from home) and started with Baskerville, Geogrotesque and Museo Slab.

If you are looking for fonts that have a hand-lettering style, that’s a different conversation but you can find those here.

Shadows And User Interface Discoverability Link
There’s a reason GUI designers incorporate shadows into their designs — they help create visual cues in the interface which tell human brains what user interface elements they’re looking at.

Instead I’m going to show you a simple color workflow that you can use in your next web project.

After immersing myself in it for a year, I find Swift to be deeply web in its soul. From its expressive, functional syntax and its interpretive playgrounds to its runtime performance and recent foray into open source, Swift is the web developer’s compiled language (with the mature and convenient safeguards characteristic of the compiled environment).

Everything you need to get you started is here. It’s free. And the community is amazing.

Here are the rules:

Light comes from the sky (see Part 1)
Black and white first (see Part 1)
Double your whitespace (see Part 1)
Learn the methods of overlaying text on images
Make text pop— and un-pop
Only use good fonts
Steal like an artist