Tag Archives: YouTube

Daily Ramblings – Spread Your Wings Sunday – Week of September 13, 2020.

13 Sunday Sep 2020

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Happy Sunday!!

Weekly Challenge: This week’s challenge is to learn something new. You pick the topic; you choose how much you want to know. Widen your knowledge about something you’re curious about. You can achieve this challenge by reading a book or article, watching something on YouTube, or finding a good documentary on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Happy learning!

Share in the comments about the topic you chose or what you learned.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Thankful Thursdays – Online Learning

20 Thursday Aug 2020

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Today, I’m thankful for online learning. Not only is online learning inexpensive or even free, it provides me a way to continue learning throughout my life. My tastes change from time-to-time, and it’s nice to be able to find anything I want, whenever I want.

If learning new things interests you, here are a few, I recommend:

  • YouTube.com
  • MasterClass.com
  • Codecademy.com
  • Udemy.com
  • Study.com

I realize that some may be on a tight budget, particularly now if you are unemployed because of COVID-19. If that’s the case, stick with free online tutorials and YouTube, which are all free. I recommend university lectures, since the information you are learning comes from accredited institutions, like Harvard, MIT, Yale, etc.

Some of my previous recommendations like Coursera and EdX are no longer on my list of recommended sources. Coursera is free, but requires interaction between you and other students. If no one in your class responds to your postings, you don’t get credit until they do. I’m also not a huge fan of deadlines. I’m learning to learn, not earn a degree. Coursera operates like a traditional college in this respect. EdX turned me off with their ID certification process and their lack of dependable IT support. I tried to take an Algebra course on EdX and I either could not log onto the site some days or there was some other unpredictable glitch that no one would respond to within a reasonable amount of time. Avoid Coursera or EdX if either of these issues troubles you.

I love to write, read, and learn. Learning is something I include in my daily schedule. I am very pleased with Study.com. It has a terrific interface and is reasonably priced. It requires a monthly fee of $39, but the service you get is amazing. I opted for the $59 per month option, but again, if your budget doesn’t allow for any expenses for this kind of thing, you can find some terrific stuff on YouTube. Jordan Peterson’s lecture series on Personality and his Maps of Meaning course are awesome! Even if you are not a Jordan Peterson fan politically, he is a brilliant mind and both courses do not reflect his political views. Like anything, obviously, a course is a matter of choice and need. I have also watched Harvard lectures on WWII, Yale lectures on happiness, and MIT lectures on Python and artificial intelligence. All of them are highly informative.

Learning is something that anyone should aspire to, even if you’ve been out of school for a while. Lectures don’t come with graded assignments, they literally just teach you. It is terrific. As a person with a father who is afflicted with dementia, I want to do everything I can physically and mentally to avoid the same fate, if possible.

On another note, I purchased a year’s subscription to Curiosity.com. This is a great site for documentaries and only costs $20 a year. If you are a fan of getting pizza delivered, sacrificing one pizza for an entire year of learning is worth it in my opinion. You can watch documentaries on space exploration, anthropology, history, climate change, and many other topics I find to be absolutely fascinating.

So today, I’m grateful for all the services that are available online to teach us something new. Thank you Study.com, Curiosity.com, Masterclass.com, Udemy.com, YouTube.com, and Codecademy.com. You stretch me each day and make me a better, more learned individual.

Have a great Thursday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Thankful Thursday – Grateful for My Dad

23 Thursday Jul 2020

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Dad’s got Dementia. I returned home in January 2017 to come home to help out the folks. Since coming back home, I have seen first-hand how devastating this disease is. Dad loved TV for most of his life. He was born in 1939, so he was part of the first TV generation, growing up on radio initially. Within a year of my return, he forgot how to turn on the TV.

His short-term memory and attention span have also taken a hit. He can no longer follow long and complicated plots on TV or on streaming sources like Netflix. He is also not a huge fan of public TV because he hates all of the commercials. So, I got him on YouTube and he loves it. There is a lot of variety, most of the videos he watches are 5-10 minutes in length and they are entertaining to him.

Dad provided for the family for over 40 years. He made a good home for Mom, provided for three kids, and before he retired, was working 16-hour shifts to put together a big enough nest egg for he and Mom to retire on. Well done, Dad.

Dad is still an avid reader. He probably puts down 3-4 books a month. I don’t think he understands much of the stories, but it keeps him busy. Today, I’m grateful to my Dad, who now needs my help. It feels good to pay back the life my parents gave me and my siblings, by retiring early and refocusing my life on new things and them.

Today, I’m grateful for my Dad.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – You VS You.

25 Monday May 2020

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I hope you enjoyed the video. It’s short, but I was pumped after watching it. Here’s my week, folks!

Monday – Day off for Memorial Day.

Tuesday – Saturday:

Physical – exercise routine

Mental – online classes, writing, programming, reading

Spiritual – journaling, reading, studying, contemplation

Social – blogging, posting quotes and articles, stay active in social networks, including WordPress

That’s all I got, folks. Keep pushing, grinding, and digging to get what you want. YOU are the only one that can make that choice.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Serving Life

09 Saturday May 2020

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Today I’d like to explore serving life. Serving life is not some magnanimous act. It is doing your part. It really is that simple. I believe each of us is put on this Earth to serve a purpose. Maybe you’re a housewife, an accountant or doctor, a soldier, or some other profession. You are someone’s son or daughter, mother or father, aunt or uncle.

Each of us is in a unique position, in a unique family, in a unique community, serving our fellow beings by just doing the things inherent in the roles we find ourselves in. In other words, we serve by being who we are and doing what comes naturally. There is no effort involved, it just is.

We each play a part in this fabric we call reality. Some things we do for others is done unconsciously. A casual smile at the local grocer, a wave to a neighbor as we head off to work, or sharing some of our garden with the local wildlife (whether we want to or not). Some things are done purposefully, like when we send a nice note to someone, finish something for someone we promised to do, or taking care of a particular chore in our home.

What other ways do we serve? The list is infinite. The impact each of us has on the world is immense. Each action is like dropping a stone into a pond. The ripples of water go out, and they come back. The same thing happens with the actions we take and the ones we don’t take.

There are so many things to wonder about and this was one of those things I wondered about today. How do I affect the world, the universe, this dimension? How do my actions contribute or detract from the universal cause?

Here is a YouTube video by Carl Sagan called the Pale Blue Dot. It will give you a sense of what I am trying to say today in today’s posting. With that said, enjoy.

I think the key to all of this is to just be. Be the best you can be. Do the best you can. The rest will work itself out. I just wanted to give you something to think about on this fine Saturday. I hope all of you have a great weekend!

Until next time…

Dave