Thoughts create emotions (and emotions create thoughts). I have benefited alot of a technique I learened from a book called 'Feeling Good' by David Burns. It's a book that uses cognitive behavioural therapy to challenge irrational thoughts.

1 - You write down your (negative) thoughts about the situation/yourself/whatever it is that you think

2 - You try to recognize any of the cognitive distortions which makes your though irrational http://www.nancycarterlcsw.com/sitebuilder/images/Cognitive_Distortions-650x910.jpg

3 - Once you found out which type of thinking errors are at the base of your thoughts, you can challenge it.
Example:

Thought: I'm a big loser, I failed the test like I do always, I will end up homeless.

Thinking errors: Labeling (loser), generalization (like i always do), jumping to conclusions, all or nothing thinking.

Rational response: I sometimes mess up, but that doesn't make me a big loser. I also have a couple of really good grades and it looks like I'm going to pass this class easily. If I don't pass it I won't end up under a bridge, I will just try again and I will most likely pass the test then.

It's a simple example, but maybe you can work with it. if you want to know more, download the book 'Feeling Good' by david burns. It's easy to download. Of course you can combine this technique with a meditation. You closely monitor your thoughts during meditation without interfering. just observe the negativity/irrationality of your thoughts.

Bitcoin Guide

Buying bitcoin

• Bitinstant - https://bitinstant.com/ - Deposit USD Cash at locations like Walmart, CVS, and others. Deposit slip for Moneygram requires name, address and usually isn't checked. CVS may require ID, depending on regional policy and clerk's mood. Rate is guaranteed at time of deposit. Combined deposit fee of variable 3.99% (Bitinstant fee) + flat $3.95 (Zipzap fee). No signup required. DELAYS BEING REPORTED upto weeks in time due to high volume of transactions. BEWARE. (April 24, 2013)
• Localbitcoins - https://localbitcoins.com/ - Buy & sell with cash in person. Signup required to contact buyers/sellers. Status varies with individual buyer/seller. Take appropriate safety measure when meeting someone in person. (April 24, 2013) Use a guide: http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=155689
• Blue Sky Traders - http://ok2yri46aaptiu2d.onion/index.htm - Deposit USD Cash at any Bank of America location, no ID or bank account required. (April 24, 2013)
• Sugarmama on Silk Road - http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/user/aace915f06 - Buy moneypaks/reloadit cards from various stores (moneypak cards cost $4.95, reloadit cards cost $3.95), No ID required. Sell the cards to Sugar Mama for bitcoins. Fee % decreases with larger moneypak/reloadit cards: 12-20% for moneypak, 10% for reloadit. Check her listings for availability (April 24, 2013)
• bitcoin-otc on freenode - irc://irc.freenode.net/bitcoin-otc - http://bitcoin-otc.com - Buy/sell bitcoins from individuals in exchange for various options depending on ads. Accessing freenode IRC over tor requires a registered nickname, and SASL setup. Fees depend on individual ads. Tor friendly. (April 24, 2013) Use a guide: http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=155689
• Canadian Bitcoins - https://www.canadianbitcoins.com/ - Send CAD Cash by mail or in person ?
• Coinbase - https://coinbase.com/ - ?
• Cryptocurrent - https://cryptocurrent.com/ - Website says they are registering with US FinCEN to comply with anti money laundering laws. They are accepting orders for pre-existing clients (May 10, 2013)
• Bitfloor - https://bitfloor.com/ - Deposit USD Cash at any Bank of America location using out of state deposit slip (New York), no ID or bank account required. Deposit fees % decrease with larger deposits. Buy/Sell USD for BTC at the exchange as needed. Sign up required. Tor friendly. Bitfloor has stopped trading indefinitely (April 17, 2013)
• Bitcopia - http://bitcopia.com/ - Deposit USD Cash by mail at the moment for his regular clients (Wells Fargo account closed, Bank of America funds locked for 10 days since April 24, 2013), no ID or bank account required. Bitcopia's bank accounts are closed and no longer operational (May 1, 2013)

Moving bitcoin around

Please be careful with these. Read up on reviews before you trust your money to strangers, making sure you don't get your own coins back and that the operator is trustable or not.

• Silk Road Tumbler - http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad - ?
• Bitcoin Fog - http://fogcore5n3ov3tui.onion/ - ?
• Blockchain Send Shared - https://blockchain.info/wallet/send-shared - ?
• Bitcoin Cache - https://www.bitcoincache.com/tools/scrambler - ?
• Bitcoin Laundry - http://bitcoinlaundry.com/ - ?
• BitLaundry - http://app.bitlaundry.com/ - ?
• The Bitcoin Washing Machine - http://xqz3u5drneuzhaeo.onion/users/corydolt/ - ?
• Trading bitcoins - Trade private keys or physical bitcoins (bitbills or casascius coins) with someone, preferably using some form of escrow. The transaction would trade ownership and their relevant transaction trails on the blockchain
• Trading altcoins - Trade bitcoins for altcoins and then trade altcoins back to bitcoin. This will remove your connection to the original bitcoin address after you sell the bitcoin for altcoins. After selling the altcoin for bitcoin, you will acquire the reputation of the new bitcoin address
• Blind Mixer DR - http://blindbtc6dnbo5x5.onion/ - Provable anonymity that doesn't require trusting the owner; trust-free. Not operational yet: in beta (April 24, 2013)
• Zerocoins - http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/04/zerocoin-making-bitcoin-anonymous.html - protocol extension to make bitcoin anonymous without needing to trust any central authority

The exchanges

• MtGox - https://mtgox.com/ - Not tor friendly, may require you to verify account to withdraw funds.
• Bitstamp - https://www.bitstamp.net/ - Not tor friendly. Will flag your account with "your IP is associated with criminal activity." Multiple flags will probably result in further investigation, and verification. (April 24, 2013)
• BTC-e - https://btc-e.com/ - Not tor friendly
• CampBX - https://campbx.com - ?
• Virtex - https://www.cavirtex.com/ - ?
• Bitfloor - https://bitfloor.com/ - Tor friendly. Trading suspended indefinitely (April 17, 2013)

Selling bitcoin

• Localbitcoins - https://localbitcoins.com/ - Buy & sell with cash in person. Signup required to contact buyers/sellers. Status varies with individual buyer/seller. Take appropriate safety measure when meeting someone in person. (April 24, 2013)
• Sugarmama on Silk Road - http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/user/aace915f06 - Sell bitcoins for moneypaks/reloadit cards. Apply moneypak/reloadit cards to prepaid debit cards and spend like a credit card/paypal or withdraw cash from ATM. No fees to sell bitcoins. Check her listings for availability (April 24, 2013)
• Canadian Bitcoins - https://www.canadianbitcoins.com/ - Sell bitcoins and get CAD cheque by mail or CAD Cash by mail or in person - ?
• bitcoin-otc on freenode - irc://irc.freenode.net/bitcoin-otc - http://bitcoin-otc.com - Buy/sell bitcoins from individuals in exchange for various options depending on ads. Accessing freenode IRC over tor requires a registered nickname, and SASL setup. Fees depend on individual ads. Tor friendly. (April 24, 2013)
• FastCash4Bitcoins - https://fastcash4bitcoins.com - Sell bitcoins and get USD via ACH (Direct Deposit), Bank Wires, Paypal, Dwolla, or check in mail. Not sure about ID requirements. 1% fee for Paypal, and anywhere from $1-$21 depending on other methods of sale. Tor friendly or not? (April 24, 2013)

source

Online Privacy Tools: Take Your Privacy Back

Don't ask your government for your Privacy, take it back:

• Browser Privacy: HTTPS Everywhere, AdBlock Plus + EasyList, Ghostery, NoScript (FireFox), NotScript (Chrome)
• VPNs: BTGuard (Canada), ItsHidden (Africa), Ipredator (Sweden), Faceless.me (Cyprus / Netherlands)
• Internet Anonymization: Tor, Tor Browser Bundle, I2P
• Disk Encryption: TrueCrypt (Windows / OSX / Linux), File Vault (Mac).
• File/Email Encryption: GPGTools + GPGMail (Mac), Enigmail (Windows / OSX / Linux)
• IM Encryption: Pidgin + Pidgin OTR
• IM/Voice Encryption: Mumble, Jitsi
• Phone/SMS Encryption: WhisperSystems, Ostel, Spore, Silent Circle ($$$)
• Google Alternative: DuckDuckGo
• Digital P2P Currency: BitCoin
• Live Anonymous/Secure Linux: TAILS Linux

If you have any problems installing or using the above software, please contact the projects. They would love to get feedback and help you use their software.

Have no clue what Cryptography is or why you should care? Checkout the Crypto Party Handbook or the EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense Project.

Just want some simple tips? Checkout EFF's Top 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy.

Some have suggested I should also include: Cryptocat, Startpage, DNSCrypt, and I think Bitmessage is currently being developed.

Here is a good list of VPN providers that take anonymity seriously. Also, if you don't want your data stored in the cloud anymore, check out BitTorrent Sync.

Data Visualization

Theory

Although you could just wing it, knowing some of the why's and why not's of data visualization will help put your creations an inch or two above the rest.

I highly highly recommend picking up Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. After you read it you'll be able to make jokes about inside jokes about pie charts and be everyone's best friend. On a first read-through it might not make too much sense, but once you start working on projects light bulbs will start going off.

Practice

These days the major thing to learn in the world of data visualization is D3. It's a big hunk of JavaScript code that can help with everything from drawing maps to making graphs.

If you want to learn D3 (which you now should), the best place to start is Mike Bostock's Let's Make A Map. The end result is a pretty boring map of the UK, but it steps you through the hows and the whys of every single piece of code. When I first started with D3 I could have saved myself a lot of headaches by reading it closely.

Once you get your feet wet, [http://bost.ocks.org/mike/selection/](How Selections Work) is great for
clarifying some of the concepts behind how D3 deals with data display.
There's also a tutorials page on github, but the shortest and most efficient path to making cool visualizations is just plain copying. How to make great visualizations, in 3 steps:

1) Visit http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock 2) Scroll around until you find a couple examples of the kind of visualization you want to make 3) Copy the code, then hack away at it until it does want you want
Since you've already got some coding background you might be all set. JavaScript can be an insane beast at times, but if you start simple and from existing code you should get the hang of it without too much work.

A Brief Introduction To Coding For The Web

OK, so maybe you do need to learn a little HTML/CSS/JavaScript first. But let me stress the little - it's easy to get bogged down in the details, and the skills you need to edit a visualization to do what you want aren't exactly the same as when learning JS from scratch.

Fundamentals: HTML, CSS and Javascript. HTML is the information on a page, CSS is what makes it look nice. JavaScript it what makes it move around or be interactive. JS is the toughest, while HTML and CSS are easy (the basics, at least).

Go ahead and learn HTML and CSS from Codacademy first. I disagree with the way that every single place on the Internet teaches this stuff, but so it goes.

Check out these recommendations or these recommendations for JavaScript. If you don't feel like reading through them I'll just blindly point you toward Codecademy - JavaScript track, jQuery track.
Sidenote: jQuery is a big hunk of JavaScript that makes common web programming tasks easier.

But really, honestly, truly, you should read the links that aren't Codacademy.

What do I make visualizations about?

Any time you hear something interesting or read an interesting article or just think, "could I make a visualization out of this?"

Other resources

Pretend you're a developer for a news organization. Read up on Source, Data for Radicals, and a million other things I'm neglecting. If you want to get real crazy subscribe to the NICAR email list to see how people who do "computer-assisted reporting" think.

But honestly, just do it! That singles map was the very very first visualization I ever made, and 5 years later it's still getting plenty of traffic. Throw a bunch of nonsense up on a site, submit it to reddit, and eventually you're bound to have something work out.