Learning something new.

Looking at my wife churn out pleasant music on a keyboard with barely 2 weeks of classes, I wonder why I never invested any time in any of the creative fields (painting, sketching, music, photography...).

I think the basic issues for me are around

1. Getting out of the comfort zone. The existing mental pathways are easier to go along with.
2. Trying to look for "productive output".
3. A belief that any new field requires a huge amount of practice and dedication.

Due to this I always ended up spending my free time on the next "scripting language" or "programming model" :). So taking a different view point and approach, I am going to:

1. Focus on the joy of learning/exploring something new.
2. Commit a fixed time (say 30hours) to a given field and see where it goes.

At the end of it if I can enjoy/appreciate music or photography more, it would be more than worth it. RK's tip is a very practical fallback :)

Windows workflow

Looking at the samples and having some vague discussions at work about workflows got me a little irritated and frustrated about whats going on.

Luckily someone pointed me to this book: "Essential Workflow" and I must say that it is one well written book. It explains the "concepts" behind it instead of dealing with some vague design surface or cooked up examples. Basically WWF is a 'programming model' for long running resumable programs.

With fundas in mind it is much easier to make a call on whether WF is a fit for a given context.

You can find a sample chapter here: Sample Chapter