Robert’s blog

Today I’ve finally submitted my last assignment for the Data Science Professional certificate and, therefore, I received my certificate of completion along with a digital badge, that is endorsed by The American Council on Education, as a reward for the hard work I had put into earning it.

Together with the ones I’ve earned from taking Google’s IT Support Professional specialization, these achievements mean I’m now halfway through my journey to obtaining a semesters’ worth of credits.

All in all, the list of certificates to earn now looks like this:

• Google IT Support Professional *
• IBM Data Science Professional *
• IBM Applied AI Professional
• IBM AI Engineering Professional

Next steps would be to enrol on IBM’s Applied AI Professional specialization, and start tackling those courses, but that’s something to mind tomorrow.

On the other hand, I’m debating with myself on whether or not to sit for the C1 Advanced Exam or the Duolingo English Test since, as far as I know, both serve the same purpose when it comes to demonstrating my knowledge of English, the first costing $285 and the latter $59.

Yesterday, as I was enjoying a cup of coffee while updating some things on my website, I remembered about a site that caught my attention a few years ago, but that I had ignored due to time constraints.

To be honest I don’t really know how did I first stumble upon it. I think it was at university because it combines computer programming with mathematics, but that would be a guess.

The site I’m talking about is projecteluer.net, and I’ve been having a great time coming up with solutions to some of the problems.

I’ll be uploading the answers I come up with to rnsavinelli/project-euler. For the time being, what I’ve uploaded is mostly code, but if I find the math the staple of the solution, I might as well transcribe that to a markdown/latex file to make it easier to understand.

If you think you’re up for a challenge, why not give it a try as well?

Following the alignments I’ve set for myself this year on my new year’s resolution, and pursuing the objective of reducing my digital footprint and augmenting my productivity, I resolved that selling what used to be my workstation, and getting rid of digital distraction was the way to go.

Narrowing Social Media Presence

Let’s first discuss the latter of the two since it was the hardest. The approach I took to reducing digital distraction was to close most of my social media accounts, and removing the applications from my cellphone. Psychological stress aside, doing it was actually much simpler that I thought it would be. I did not possess that many accounts (just one on LinkedIn, one on Instagram, and one on facebook), but it seemed at first that if I dared to delete them, I would suddenly cease to exist. After all, everyone I know seems to enjoy what those sites offer, and love updating their status, publishing pictures, and such. It feels unnatural not to be on there with them, doesn’t it?

Looking back after some weeks, I’m truly terrified. How can a social media site be so tightly tied to everyone’s life? Why does it take that much will power to press delete? What’s wrong with us?

Being a Responsible Computing Devices Owner

Regarding the other decision I took, since I owned a laptop, a cellphone, a desktop computer, and a server, choosing what device should I get rid off was not an easy choice since each one of them served a different purpose.

Let’s start with the server. This server I have is an old custom built computer that’s about 11 or 12 years old and has almost no market value, so selling is not an option. I’ve taken good care of it over the years, I’ve replaced some faulty RAM, bought it a new PSU, etc. so throwing it away, and having it become electronic waste doesn’t call my attention since I still have use cases for it, and I love the fact that I’m still able to keep it up and running as an usable device with my copy of OpenBSD.

My laptop and my phone are part of my daily computing, and by selling them I don’t think I can reach any ground breaking productivity boost. If something, it would probably contribute to achieving quite the opposite.

Now, for my workstation/desktop pc, being it a recent acquisition (it’s been about a year since I assembled it), my desktop computer was luckily easy to sell. It had an AMD 5600X processor, 32 GB of DDR4 RAM, an Nvidia 2080 Super graphics card, it had two M.2 drives, one with archlinux with the nvidia open source drivers for my everyday computing needs, and the other one a copy of windows 10 on it for those occasions where my friends and I would spend an afternoon together playing some online games.

The End Result

To be honest, I’m really happy with how it all turned out. The PC I managed to sell it to a friend of mine that was on the search for new hardware, and (as of today), I’m only on Facebook. I was about to remove that account too, but I weighted pros and cons, and decided it was better to keep it since it is my only mean of communication with some relatives.

This week I bought four books to help me improve my english grammar and vocabulary throughout the year, alongside the official C1 Advanced Preparation material, namely they are:

• English Grammar in Use, by Raymond Murphy.
• Advanced Grammar in Use, by Martin Hewings.
• Language Practice for First, by Michael Vince.
• Language Practice for Advanced, by Michael Vince.

Why B2 level books alongside C1/C2 level ones? To be honest, I haven’t revised my english knowledge in a while. I mean, yes, I’m a user of the language, but you don’t need a lot of formal learning on English to get by… But talking about proper and ample usage of grammar and vocabulary, that’s another thing. Ranging from some words’ spelling, to irregular verbs and irregular plural forms… I haven’t had any sort of formal or informal education on English for at least 4 years.

As of today, I’ve complete units 1 to 18 from English Grammar in Use, unit 1 from the grammar section of Language Practice for First, and Unit 1 from the vocabulary section of the same book.

Today I’ve been giving shape to the academic path I’m striving to take.

I’ve been doing the math on how much would each single course cost me, and it’s quite a bit. Luckily I’ve found a series of online courses (four professional certificates to be more precise) that are eligible for credit once completed. If possible, I would like to complete all of them since that would mean huge savings on the long run.

The four certifications are:

• Google IT Support Professional *
• IBM Data Science Professional
• IBM Applied AI Professional
• IBM AI Engineering Professional

Each of them would give me enough credits (15) to avoid taking some courses. In particular, two level 4 compulsory modules, and two level 6 modules. To put you into context, to be awarded the BSc you need to reach a minimum of 360 credit hours, and earning all these certificates would mean 60 credits already on my favour, or in other words, a whole semesters’ worth of credits. It’s a lot, isn’t it?

You may have noticed that I placed an asterisk next to Google IT Support Professional, that is because I’ve completed it earlier this year while I was still defining my career path. Here is the certificate on Coursera if you want to take a look at it! And here is the badge that has been issued to me!