"Recorded in Seattle at Reciprocal Recording by Jack Endino for $600."

I read that after Nirvana had already gone on to be one of the biggest bands in the world. But here was their first commercial album, where they started out & just before they made Nevermind, and the cost of making that first album was so much less than I'd ever thought. It made things seem possible, that you can start with whatever you have. It meant you couldn't blame a lack of money; if you had $600, you could make an album. Nirvana taught me to bootstrap.

I saw technology as one way to help address this complex problem. I took a bunch of night classes in CS, and I'll be graduating with a Masters in CS from a full-time program in May. I wish I started down this path earlier because there is so much to do, but I guess that's how life is. I've found that I am happiest when I am giving to and empowering others, and the technological revolution we are currently living through enables us to do this at an amazing scale. I feel very fortunate to be alive at this time in history, and to have had a path in life that enabled me to find Computer Science. This is what motivates me to work relentlessly every day.

In peace, Mike

the American Dream was not a possiblity for everyone

and

it is very difficult for her

No rational person thinks it is easy in the United States to go from being low-income to high-income. But hopefully also no rational person thinks it is "not a possibility for everyone" as you first said.

I went from a very low-income family to very high-income myself, so I know it is possible.

There are plenty of rational people who believe that and I'm certain they could provide you with convincing arguments for their stance.

That's actually one of the things that originally drew me to computer science--code is inherently democratizing. It only takes a small, core group of people to build something world-class, provided that core group knows what the hell they're doing. Unlike just about any other field out there, software is something anyone can create. And as hardware has become more commoditized and virtualized, the barriers to entry have been reduced almost purely to knowledge and effort.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

NB I suspect i like this because of the Mandela connection with one of the all time great rugby stories.

Actually at the moment - I'm finding this mountain biking video rather inspiring - mainly because of the music and wonderful scenery that I've climbed/walked (rather than cycled) over:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ_IQS3VKjA

Get action. Do things; be sane; don’t fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action.

Scholars have interpreted this quote, and Teddy's overall crazed drive as his way of staving off depression.

And from his counsin, FDR:

There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.

A few others that I've collected off of HN comments:

Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it. If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which way works better. - John Carmack

Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success. - this, or some variation of this, was used in advertising for Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition

1) What are the most important problems in your field? 2) Are you working on one of them? 3) Why not?

[1] http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

1: http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

2: https://archive.org/stream/adluciliumepistu02sene#page/n7/mo...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic/dp/019...

That being said: Realising your spheres of control and the limits of control helped a lot with anxiety. Stoicism is kind of like math. It's a concept to life a life. It's worth nothing if you only read the texts. You have to practice and ingrain the concepts. Well you even have to really understand the concepts. I did neither. It's still comforting and calming to read the ancient texts.

It helps with anxiety as it helps to put things in perspective. As it challenges you to conquer your fear.

As for depression... I can only speak for myself but but reading the ancient texts helps you to realize your role in the world and to bring back your unrealistic thoughts into productive ones. Albert Ellis used stoic philosophy as a building block of CBT. Reading the originals is always worth it.

As for the perspective on emotions: Yes. Stoicism has some very radical views on emotions. I'm not a stoic and I don't want to be one but basically the overall idea is to act despite emotions. Don't ignore them, don't suppress them but accept them and act despite them.

It's difficult and it's not a cheesy solution to all your problem. But it's worth a read. It's the foundation of Christianity so it's not that far away from western society. Don't take it as religion. Read it critical in the historic context and read other books but I've found it worthwhile.

Quote: "Everyone knew it was impossible to do. One day, someone who did not know showed up and did it."

Person: Alexis Ohanian - I know he's kind of goofy and perhaps not the most inspirational to someone else, but he gave me hope when I needed it most. I never actually met him. I discovered his story at a serendipitous moment when my father, the last person who believed in me at that time, had just passed away of cancer. I finally learned that, outside of my social bubble, exploring unbeaten paths was a value rather than a defect. I discovered YC and HN because of Alexis. I owe him more gratitude than I know how to express.

Curiosity: Future generations will wonder how we could endure the inefficiencies and unnecessary hardships we put up with. I want to discover why they’ll wonder that.

Fear: PG mentioned toward the end of "Before the Startup" that, "If you're absolutely terrified of starting a startup, you probably shouldn't do it." I am absolutely terrified of giving myself a reason in the future to look back and think, "I wish I had tried."

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

There are many quotes that will make you wiser, but to me, the most important thing to remember about politics and society being mostly disorganized and unable to properly help individuals, is that society resembles a growing pool of microbes.

It's blooming with life with diversity, but it's not really aware of itself. To me people are aware of themselves, but society is not aware of itself. People are truly alone in their own life, society is not really there to really help them or make them connect with each other properly. This way, society is unable to really improve itself by improving its subjects. That's why I try to compare society as a live being, holding several cells.

This helped me contextualize myself in society, and give context to what society really is. Also important to never look down to anybody or anything, always be curious and not leave a thought with pessimism, always try to understand the compromises and origins of things. It's not an ode to optimism and positivism, but always be sure to confront your interests as a human in the void of the universe, and understand that even if it looks pointless, if it's a step forward, it's a good step.

I'm also very bad at expressing myself.

Mot sure if we could ever reach collective conscious of our so sociery. Anthropologists like Marshsll Sahlins was onxe enamoured with hunter-gatherer for societies for this reason. But large scale industrial societies? I can't see a way for a microbe pool that complex to feel truly whole

The mere thought of wasting this alignment of circumstance always spurs me to action.

As for reading, a few things popped into my head in no particular order:

The Greatest Salesman in the World, by Og Mandino

Emerson's Essays, particularly "Self Reliance"

Biographies of people like James Clerk Maxwell and Tesla

If, by Kipling

Any of Bucky Fuller's books

And really, just look around at what people are doing in our industry. Our peers are a constant source of inspiration. I see what some of my friends are doing the field of IoT and it makes me want to get up every day at 4am and hack until my fingers fall off.

That same speech has some other great quotes:

"Let me right at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control. It's the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies."

http://www.scottishleftreview.org/li/index.php?option=com_co...

This is a strongly left speech and some of it is goin to be offensive(?) to the HN audience, but the good bits are great.

Take a look, I'm sure you'll find quite a lot that you like:

https://www.evernote.com/pub/kristofferr/inspiringQuotes

"When you can do whatever you want, you get a variant of the terror induced by the proverbial blank page. There are a lot of people who think the thing stopping them from writing that great novel they plan to write is the fact that their job takes up all their time. In fact what's stopping 99% of them is that writing novels is hard. When the job goes away, they see how hard."

which is part of a pg comment on an HN thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1512096

Same with the ideas - I have tons of ideas, enough for decades of coding. Unfortunately most of these fun things eat up a lot time. Browsing Reddit is fun, but not productive at all.

It gives me the motivation to work towards a goal which lies tens, hundreds, maybe a thousand years in the future.

Seeing this video puts my own selfish needs and feelings in perspective, and inspires me to do my little part in making humanity just a little bit better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass

He started as a slave in America and ended up an ambassador of the U.S. to Haiti.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yijcWsLda8#t=10

While ST:ENT was widely criticized as "losing the spirit", I think that its intro - the images, the song, the message - is the perfect and most beautiful description of the spirit of Star Trek. Hope, curiosity, exploration, faith that we can solve all our problems, that things are to get better and not worse - all in there.

Edit: no fair being cryptic. http://www.timshel.org/timshel.php

Or, if you prefer a shorter version with music:http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QmD6QwI9nXA

This is an awesome Saturday question! Recently, I wrote a blog post about how to capture motivation and turn them into actions.

Here it is: http://blog.bottega8.com/capturing-moments-of-motivation-and...

André Gide

A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.

William G.T. Shedd

Some are always in a state of preparation, occupied in previous measures, forming plans, accumulating materials and providing for the main affair. These are certainly under the secret power of idleness. Nothing is to be expected from the workman whose tools are for ever to be sought.

Samuel Johnson

"It started with functional programming, one of the academic topics which has been discussed since the 60s but never took off."

You seem to frequent HN, so surely you must be aware that functional programming actually took off in the end - just now. In the last 5 years it went from something that people would give you strange looks over mentioning, to The Hottest Thing in programming. "Functional" is now synonymous with awesome and something people brag about (whether they understand it or not is another thing, but that's how things are with fashion).

Functional programming is an amazing tool, but I found it super hard to program real world applications. Object oriented programming is much more useful for that, because it represents more effectively the world that we live in, which is composed of objects that talk to each other.

Yes, functional is now cool and awesome and hackerish. Nothing wrong with that. However, while it does make you smarter (since it gives you a new viewpoint and is a new skill), it does not mean that you need to apply it everywhere.

I'll add that us in HN live in a bubble and what we read here is not representative of real world. Of all programmers I know only two really know and have successfully coded stuff with functional programming. So... It has not taken off in my opinion. There seems to be more eyes looking at it, or maybe people using it are more vocal so we read more about it.

* Explosions in the Sky

* Mogwai

* This Will Destroy You

* The American Dollar

* Tycho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaIvk1cSyG8

I seriously I find that kid's enthusiasm inspirational. Sure, maybe learning to ride a bike is really no big deal, but the euphoria of having truly mastered something new is incredible.

I totally agree with you, for me it's the euphoria of seeing it work, after days or weeks of poking and reading and prodding and reading some more and scratching your head and re-reading the same things.

That light-bulb moment is addicting, that's what keeps me going.

Edit: There also seems to be a little bit of correlation between how long it takes to make it work, and how great it feels seeing it finally do it's thing. That can be a source of encouragement to take on a project that's a bigger than your previous one.

Being the 21-year-old guy who didn't learn how to ride a bike when growing up I am, this has actually motivated me to do exactly that, as a start.

It's an Old School message that still resonates by the late Dean of Personal Development.

  "When You Think of Garbage, Think of Hakeem"
    -- Coming to America

Inspiration: High quality work in pure and applied mathematics, physical science, and music.

It's hard not to get inspired by seeing other passionate entrepreneurs talk about their business.

being alone

but it often takes decades

to realize this

and most often

when you do

it's too late

and there's nothing worse

than too late.

Oh Yes by Charles Bukowski

0.99^365 = 0.03

This one thing always motivates me to put the extra effort in everything I do. Good luck mate :-)

I upvoted anyways though, because it really is beautiful.