Free piano lessons

https://app.hoffmanacademy.com/lessons

Mr. Joseph Hoffman is being generous to provide all his lessons for free on youtube for all level learners and I’ve shared this to everyone I know who wants to introduce their kids to some music lessons.

I remember showing his Hot Cross Buns video to my younger child when she was only 4, she was interested in learning music. His videos for beginners are very easy to follow for even parents without interest in music, experience with musical instruments or any idea where to start. The video lessons include correct posture, learning about keys, rhythms, listening practices, music theory, some games.

Once signing up for your free account as a parent/mentor, then you can add a student. Once logged as a student with free account, there is no difference between using the lesson plans without logging in. The free plan offers progress tracking but you can just use a calendar, notepad, whiteboard or anything to have your own progress tracker since they don’t check how good the practices go, you will be the teaching assistance to check.

https://www.hoffmanacademy.com/premium/

The premium includes games, support, sheets and some more, and there are multiple plans, monthly, yearly and lifetime with refunds within 30 days. I personally didn’t sign up for premium yet because I want to see if my younger one would like to put more time on piano. The games look fun!! Note reading can be boring or some kids don’t want to learn it, but I’m sure they would love to do it if it’s fun.

Learn like a pro

Since I’m fairly new in the DevOps world with some years of sysadmin experience but also a dad with children being homeschooled, it’s hard to find my own time to learn stuff. I need to keep up with technology for my career, I would love to learn guitar, keep in shape but also want to learn sports too. So I borrowed this book from the library.

The first chapter is talking about the pomodoro technique. I’ve heard of it but never tried, liked understood why I would do it. Oh how stupid was I?! I tried today for kubernetes, I read a book and the docs pages, followed the lab, understood more about it in about 1 hour which I might have done for some hours without the pomodoro technique. Or even a day or two if I wasn’t motivated.

It’s a really thin book without any nonsense. If you aren’t motivated, take too slow to learn something, this book is for you.

Damn affordable bluetooth noise cancelling headset?

Since working from home, I’ve wanted to have a pair of bluetooth noise cancelling headset but most of them were ridiculously expensive. I know some nice features that allow you to keep them on to talk to someone, active noise cancelling instead of muffling the noise, great build and sound quality, but I just don’t want to spend a lot.

I came up with a solution. I do have a pair of in ear bluetooth headphones already, although it’s not noise cancelling ones. I bought a earmuff! So this is how it works. I plug my ears with in ear headphones then cover my ears with the earmuff on top. It doesn’t actively cancel any noise but I do hear nothing! I can listen to stuff and use the microphone too! They are 2 items not one pair of noise cancelling headphones, I can use earmuff only for pomodoro sessions or headphones for workout and chores.

Of course the cheap solution comes with drawbacks. First, I can’t hear nothing, so I won’t know what’s going on until I get a call or something draws my attention. If the house is on fire and I’m alone, I may be in a big trouble. Another drawback is the ergonomics. The earmuff isn’t angled so it pushes my ears down hard. This can cause some pain on my ears if I put it on too long so I have to take it off every hour at least. The last one is that the pads aren’t soft and breathable. So imagine those pads are on your ears for a long time… they get sweaty 😦

Even with the drawbacks, I do love how this solution works for me. I would print some labels saying “DO NOT TALK TO ME” and stick them on the earmuff so that I get some quiet time 🙂