Posted by Hello Everyone! My name is Rodrigo Pierini, right now I’m a System Administrator @ IFSP and a MSc Student @ FEEC/UNICAMP. I’m starting this new site for several reasons!
Getting tired of social media
I’m getting tired of social media in general, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. Usually there’s just contents that it’s not of my interest. Okay, they’re funny, they’re visually great, they’re creative, but many of times just meaningless. And speaking of meaningless, I’m just tired of spending time reading and discussing meaningless topics or opinions (usually opinions, since no one’s actually trying to prove anything, just trying to force its opinions to others, and that’s really mentally and emotionally exhausting to be exposed to this kind of attitude). So, why not try to change the focus a little?
Bringing topics of interest
I already had a blog before (and I think it should be buried, so I won’t be bringing it back) where I used to post contents of my interests, basically for no one. I’ll be doing the same around here, my initial objective is to write at least one new post everyday (I’ll be using my social media freed time for this!) of at least one topic of interest. It could be a lot of things, many of them profession-related, academic-related or simple hobbies.
I work with system administration, so probably something related to my daily work routine, the tech I’m used to dealing daily, or some new problems and solutions I find along the way. I also have a (kind of) broad academic study interest, usually related to computer networking, information security and related contents, so there’ll be posts about Software-Defined Networking, Criptography, Information Security, but also about the things that I’m not actually good, like programming, web design, web programming, mobile app programming and others. I need to really get in touch to studying these things deeper.
Also, for my hobbies, I usually spend time playing games and watching animes, but there’s a few things that I need to get back to: I need to start a new technical personal project, something to make me get out of my confort zone in what I’m used to doing and start exploring new things. But out of this technical need, I’m also a multi-instrumentalist when it comes to music: I used to play the keyboard, drums, guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, flute, ocarina, tin whistle and violin, and of course, study music theory as a fundamental base for all of this, so I need to get some time back to it. Not that I’m really good at all of them, but I know at least the minimum in all of them, enough for knowing how to compose something for them and someone else apply the techniques as they please.
Teaching is the best way for learning
And it has a name: the Protégé Effect.
This means that trying to teaching others is the best way of retaining an acquired knowledge on some topic. Human memories work basically in an association manner: we set “markers” (usually emotionally) to the information we’re consuming, so the stronger the marker, the easier it is to recover an information. When we’re passively learning something, i.e. simply reading or watching something, we usually won’t have stronger markers in these kind of information, so we’ll likely forget it very soon. Once we start actively learning something, i. e. practicing, speaking or producing something, then we can create better markers for the information we’re acquiring and getting easier to remember it, sometimes even “by heart”. But what about if we combine our passive and active learning methods? well, then you could be sintetizing some content, applying it in something you like or, even better, teaching it to someone else after all of that!
So, basically where I am going with that is: These “1 new post per-day” will probably be related to teaching things from basic to more advanced content, it’ll depend basically of how I’m feeling during the day, or what I’ve been through recently. And of course, I’ll be categorizing all of that according to my interests, so it’s useful also as a knowledge base for myself and anyone else who’s interested. Let’s say, for example, I try to deploy a new service using docker at my job, then why not write down the experiences and trials, the lessons learned and the solutions found here for me to back later or even for someone else trying to find the answer for themselves?
Of course, a lot of things I work at are NDA-protected, but it won’t be preventing me from covering at least the fundaments or some of the experiences related to these, just not publishing results-related information, metrics or the scenario where it’s being applied.
Yet, I’ll be also posting some basic related content, like the fundamentals in my topics of interested, so I can keep as a teaching material whenever it’s interesting. I’m also interested in teaching (if it’s not clear up to now :P), so it’s also a good basic knowledge base for these kind of content. Also keep it in mind: I won’t be teaching just what I’m already used of, there wouldn’t be reasoning in that while my objective is also to learn new things, so I may not be always correct nor always be a hundred percent sure of what I’m teaching, but it’ll be mostly based in my empirical observation of something, so bare with me and I’m always open to be corrected when necessary =) just use the comments section for that and I’ll be crediting any correction made in the text =).
Anyway
Well, I think it’s enough presentations for today, I hope if anyone reads up to this point feel welcomed to the website!