Random writing of my random thoughts

So I thought I’d post as I haven’t talked to many people in quite a while, and when people have asked about what I’ve been doing I haven’t given particularly good answers. Just in case you didn’t know I finished last year and graduated. I’ve worked on a lot of different things, but so far most of my time has been concentrated on mobile application development (iPhone, Android). Outside of that, I have been volunteering for a while now. I have lived quite a sheltered life and it is definitely worthwhile meeting people who have had a much harder lot. It is important to realise that there are massive issues out there that don’t just go away if we ignore them. I would really encourage anyone reading this to come along even just once, as it can really open your eyes. I have spent an extraordinary amount of time on the Internet trying to increase my knowledge. Towards the end of university, I started regretting that I hadn’t gained a broader knowledge than I have. I’ve spent time exploring all sorts of areas from politics, history, psychology, philosophy, law, theology and even random trivia, but there is just so much to learn. There is a story I heard, that a man was out walking in the desert when a voice said to him, “Pick up some pebbles and put them in your pocket, and tomorrow you will be both sorry and glad.” The man obeyed. He stooped down and picked up a handful of pebbles and put them in his pocket. The next morning he reached into his pocket and found diamonds, rubies and emeralds. He was both glad and sorry. Glad that he had taken some and sorry that he hadn’t taken more. This analogy describes education perfectly. Even in engineering and maths, the areas I have been concentrating on studying for 5 years during university, there is just so much I don’t know. In engineering this includes: assembly language, networking, programming, hardware and computer graphics. I recently finished listening to a series of podcasted lectures on ethical hacking and I will expand my knowledge further, while keeping in mind that I need to pick an area to specialise in. In maths, I’ve been spending a lot of time on Math.StackExchange and seen that there is a vast amount of material that I have never seen. I have loved mathematics all my life. I was the kid who did math problems and puzzles for fun, but now I started losing interest in maths and ability is useless without the desire to use it. I know that if I had had access to this tool back in high school then I would literally be insanely good now. It is now so tempting to go back and study maths, but I know that programming will give me a greater opportunity to affect the world. I will therefore restrict the amount of time I spent here, so that I can focus on more important goal. At the moment, I am trying to gain a decent understanding of category theory, partially to help me understand functional programming. This is an area of maths that is abstract even for pure mathematicians. I imagine it like a hill, which I wish to climb just so I can see the surrounding terrain!