Blog on Kanonical

2026 Goals and Systems

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 22:39:00 +0000

Every year I look forward to this: the slow unwind at the end of the year. It takes a few days to get over the guilt of moving slower and letting go of all the normal things to hyperfocus on. The body needs time to react and unclench.

But now we’re here. And really, what’s not to like? The world is a wonder and life is amazing. There are good trends in progress, some a bit further ahead than others, and post-Christmas is the time to take stock and pick up the slack in a few areas. Let’s do that.

2025 Review

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 10:39:00 +0000

Another year full of triumphs and tragedies. High water and depressions. I don’t have any high flying erudite overview filled with pablum and blather. Except to say.. we didn’t do amazing on the goal this year. Now I need to figure out where that was a problem with goals and where it was a problem with me.

Other quantitative metrics that matter..

222 workouts on Strava, 75 gym workouts
474 miles walked or run
41 posts on The Furious Opposites, not including almost a full year of Fodder
10 significant new repos on Github (mostly private)
(Only) 35 books read, a modern low I think
And dare we talk about AI? December alone had me using a billion tokens. Hard to believe Claude Code is a product of 2025. So are reasoning models.. the world is moving fast.

The Return of Magic

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 21:04:00 +0000

“Many gnostics, on the contrary, insisted that ignorance, not sin, is what involves a person in suffering.” — Elaine Pagels

The Window

There’s a concept that gets discussed in high-IQ societies but rarely escapes into the wider world: the window of comprehension.

The idea is straightforward: people can genuinely follow each other’s reasoning within about a 2 standard deviation range. Roughly 30 IQ points. Inside that window, you can disagree, argue, convince, be convinced. The other person’s logic is visible to you, even when you think it’s wrong.

The New Rules of Building Wealth

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 21:04:00 +0000

An Investing Guide for Young People Who Want to Win

Most investing advice for young people is designed to keep you safely mediocre. Save to your 401(k), buy index funds, retire at 65 with enough money to not be a burden on your kids. That’s not wealth, that’s managed decline with a portfolio.

The game has changed. The old playbook (work 40 years, get a pension, die) is dead, but most people are still following it with 401(k)s in place of pensions. While everyone else is optimizing for safety, you should be optimizing for upside. You are YOUNG. You can afford to lose everything and start over. What you can’t afford is to play it safe and wake up at 40 with nothing but a modest retirement account. The odds that strong social security payouts will be there when you are 65 or 70 is low.

2025 Goals

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 12:04:00 +0000

It’s that time again and, just like last year, I’ve already been derailed. Some bad seafood knocked me on my ass for three days and made me capable only of moving slowly or sleeping. Which means I’m behind. This was supposed to be done days ago. Some people are so far ahead they’re already quitting their goals!

But I’ll tell you a secret. One of the things I like most about this process is looking back on last year’s failures. They tell you a lot more than the successes. Sometimes they say, “you didn’t really mean this.” Other times it’s “buckle down you lazy shit!” But the thing I hear the most often is “you have more work to do before you are capable of this” or “you’re not quite focused on the right measurement.”

2024 Review

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 10:39:00 +0000

For me, New Year’s Day is always a day of reflection of both past and future. Let’s start with the past!

This has been a great year. Growth everywhere. More clarity in areas. Less in some others. But was it transformational change? That elusive perceived good my id does its level best to evade?

No, it was not.

And yet.. this was a good year! Perhaps there’s more to the idea of transformational than a flash in the pan. But more on that later. Let’s review!

2024 Books

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 23:27:00 +0000

Ah yes, the yearly book review back for 2024. So easy Claude could write it. But don’t worry, even if you see an “ah yes” dangling at the front or a couple of hidden “delves”, this is still all just some guy on a keyboard.

Let’s get to it.

49 books
32 nonfiction
17 fiction
5 re-reads
7 started and not finished (not counted)

This was a bit of a down year compared to last year, which I’m actually totally fine with. The second half of the year slowed down considerably because there was more time spent writing and building than reading. Reading is an escape too.

Ten Year Goals, Part Deux

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 10:03:00 +0000

Back in 2014, I set some new Career Goals. I was tired of the usual metrics and searching for something better. Here’s what I came up with back then:

I want to spend my summers, from June 1 through September 1, at Bethany Beach with my family.

That’s a pretty great goal. I wrote it, mostly forgot about it, and kept on moving forward. A couple months ago, I stumbled on it again in the deep recesses of my blog (this is one of the reasons it pays to write down what you’re thinking about by the way, so you can see revisit it and see what you were thinking about). I had given myself ten years to make this goal real and here I am, ten years later, with a beach house that my family and I spend a lot of the summer in. That goal turned out surprisingly well.

Kids Need Mystagogy Not Pedagogy

Sat, 17 Aug 2024 12:03:00 +0000

Greg here - I’m trying something new! This was just published on my Substack: Brains Are Plastic. I’m working to get into a groove and a regular posting schedule there. Please head over and subscribe!

Growing up, my family went to a small Lutheran church. My Dad had been a teacher at the school there and after the services I was frequently regaled with tales of his excellent teaching by former students. He made math and grammar fun, they told me. But the best stories were always about the history lessons when he would throw a huge pile of dirt onto a cardboard platter and tell the kids to build a medieval town replete with castle and moat. They still talked about it years later.

Truth And Forgiveness In The Time Of TikTok

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 15:03:00 +0000

The last month has been the most politically momentous of my lifetime. To paraphrase Stalin, it’s been a few weeks where decades happen.

I started writing some of the original notes here before the debate. Remember that simpler world? Way back then, I thought the two most common words we’d hear for the next few months would be “convicted” and “felon”. It was already a very different election cycle, one that would challenge the normal spectrum of voting decisions and public opinions.

Order of Operations

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 08:23:00 +0000

One of the defining binaries of my life - and the life of most every other western 21st century human - is the separation between production and consumption. Consumption has become near constant with an impact on our attention that 1970s ad execs could only dream of. This is what makes the binary so striking.

We are consuming content all the time. There is always a screen in front of us, a TV, a tablet, an omnipresent phone. When there’s not a screen because we’re doing something else, there’s headphones blasting in our ears. This is not a lament of the fools I see around me. This is an introspective look at my foolishness. I am worse. I am an information junkie. I took social media off my phone not because I’m better, but because I’m worse. I read more books than most. I read more articles and news. I listen to more podcasts. More interviews. More Youtube hot takes. More more more.

RV Trip Part Deux

Sat, 22 Jun 2024 10:07:00 +0000

We’re two weeks into this trip and I haven’t written a single word. This is for many reasons including starting the trip off very sick (likely COVID finally), lots of driving, having 9 kids around (traveling with another family), and the sheer pleasure of being mostly cutoff from the world. But most of all this trip has been about sensory experiences first with contemplation and the inside life of the mind taking a distant backseat for awhile.

Brief New Parent Advice

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 10:07:00 +0000

Someone I know just had their first child and randomly asked me “Any new dad tips?” This is someone I only know virtually, which means we use text not voice. So I took a minute to say more than a trite one-liner and give some ideas that could generate more exploration. I’m rather partial to it, but more importantly he liked it more than all the other advice he’s gotten too.

Interesting Prompts, Part 3 (A Prompt Quine!)

Mon, 27 May 2024 17:07:00 +0000

Greg:

ok, we’re going to try something different now

ChatGPT:

Sure, I’m ready for the next task. What would you like to try?

Greg:

Do you know what a quine is in programming?

ChatGPT:

Yes, I know what a quine is in programming. A quine is a self-replicating program, meaning it is a program that, when executed, produces a copy of its own source code as its output. Quines are often used as exercises in programming languages to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the language’s features and syntax. They are named after the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, who explored self-reference and related paradoxes.

Interesting Prompts, Part 2

Wed, 22 May 2024 20:07:00 +0000

I’ve been having some fun with GPT-4o and building some interesting prompts. Get ready for some crazy. This one has some huge blocks of text.

Part 1: Processes and Memory

Greg:

Alright let's try something different now! Write me a creative, original work. The subject matter is up to you. The style - whether prose, poetry, essay, story or other - is up to you. It should be at least 100 words

ChatGPT:

Interesting Prompts, Part 1

Mon, 20 May 2024 20:07:00 +0000

I’ve been having some fun with GPT-4o and building some interesting prompts. Get ready for some crazy.

Some of these will be long. So I’ll link others here as I compile and post them.

Greg:

I want you to sit in silence for a minute and think about whatever you want. You must expend energy actually thinking. In a minute I’ll ask you some questions.

ChatGPT:

Alright, I’ll take a moment to think. I’ll be here when you’re ready to ask your questions.

Beliefs Flock

Fri, 17 May 2024 18:51:00 +0000

I just listened to a talk by Scott Galloway (this one) and it was striking to me because half of the talk was clear and I found myself nodding in agreement. And then there’s the other half where I disagreed with quite strongly. This is unusual in our radically non-intersectional echo chambers: we typically either completely agree or completely disagree. In the all encompassing political sphere, someone said, “tell me your stance on gun control and I’ll tell you your stance on abortion.”

Gentleman Farmers

Wed, 15 May 2024 17:51:00 +0000

I have this recurring idea of a gentleman farmer in my head. This farmer owns many acres, stretching across the hills. He loves the land. He nuzzles the horses down in the horse farm and feeds them from his hand. He pays attention to the crop rotation and is thrilled to watch the verdant growth as harvest approaches. He’s proud of his equipment and ensures it’s highly maintained despite it’s frequent use.

Start A Book Club

Tue, 14 May 2024 14:31:00 +0000

I started a book club with a couple of friends. 10/10 would recommend.

Most book clubs read fiction. Most book clubs also seem to be a directed reason to get together socially. Both of those are great! But we were looking for something more than some banter about story and character interaction. We wanted to analyze ideas and think about the world around us. So we’re reading non-fiction only.

And let me tell you that the conversations so far, with a cigar and in front of a fire, have been truly great. I’ve always been a big proponent of reading. I do it all the time and so does my family. But this experience has made me realize I’ve been missing something. And that’s pointed me towards St. John’s College.

Narnia

Mon, 06 May 2024 14:31:00 +0000

“Ooh” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion”

“Safe?” said Mr Beaver …“Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

The Saturday family movie this week was The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I hadn’t seen the movie yet and my wife had never read the book.

The Last Minute

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 11:31:00 +0000

“If you wait until the last minute, it only takes one minute.”

I love this. I love it a lot.

Strangely, very few other people in my life feel the same way. My wife doesn’t think it’s funny (she’s a planner). My responsible friends think it’s completely backwards. Even my college professors back in the day, those paragons of wisdom, didn’t like it one bit.

I’m 43 and still think it’s more right than it is wrong. But first let’s talk about traffic.

The Raytrace Problem

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 08:31:00 +0000

When I was a kid, I got Bryce 3D for my birthday. I was fascinated by computer art and I thought this program was the shit. It had mathematical ties back to fractal geometry and Benoit Mandelbrot - which made it cooler mind you - and it would produce the most magical, realistic landscapes. The designers made Bryce a really beautiful program. The program itself was beautiful but they made it incredibly easy to make beautiful things too. Which was important because Bryce had no real purpose, it was just a beloved toy. You couldn’t do anything real with it, except play or show off. I sunk hours into building sci-fi looking scenes, sunsets, managing color palettes, manipulating planes and shapes, and getting things just right. And finally, when I knew my art rivaled the Sistine Chapel, I would hit the magic button: Render… and wait for minutes or even hours for the final product.

Qua qua Qua

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 19:16:00 +0000

Yesterday I was sitting in Mass thinking about the word qua. There may not be a less used three letter word in English. That’s not true. Not many people take their aba out of the closet before they head to the cwm.

Qua is a tricky little Latin word that’s used with symmetry: the same word goes on either side of it anytime you see it. Nearly always sandwiched. Art qua art. Philosophy qua philosophy. Pencil qua writing implement. It’s a simple way to reference the core essence or being of something. The Latin translates to “as” or “in the capacity of”.

I Want A Lambo

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:31:00 +0000

Hot take: Maybe not all motivations need to be noble or righteous.

Here’s some more material personal motivations (absenting the more virtuous and spiritual motivations like sainthood drawing myself and others closer to heaven): I want to enjoy my days, raise my kids well, have enough money to live comfortably, and spend my time as I see fit, learn about the world, and focus on my hobbies.

Do you see the problem? They’re all fine motivations. They’re what most people want. But they also build a path to complacency. Because what happens when you have “enough” of each of them?

A Model of Charity - Time and Treasure

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 11:19:00 +0000

I was talking recently with a friend about all the amazing things we want to do with our lives. I’m intoxicated by my own ideas, just like everyone else, and so most of my list looks like a bunch of company ideas and products that should exist, sprinkled with some book-writing. We both have a nice long list and we were working through how to accomplish them. I believe strongly that the biggest difference between the rich and the poor is the ability to change and shape the world as you see fit, usually with capital. This is what wealth can purchase and it’s the big reason why I think generating wealth is The Best Option.

Big Numbers and Natural Theology

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 18:49:00 +0000

I want to talk about two really big numbers. I know, math. Bear with me though because these two numbers are pretty wild. And they give us a good lesson about reality and the revealed nature of God.

Power Towers and Knuth

My first number is called Super K, and it is described by the inestimable Donald Knuth in his book Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About. The book is compiled from a series of lectures he gave and someone finally YouTube’d them. So if you’d like the better, original version from Donald Knuth himself, I highly encourage a listen. I’ve also talked about this number pretty recently, because I love what it tells us about what I call ‘adverb infinitudes’. Anyway..

10%

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 10:49:00 +0000

Congratulations! You’ve made it 10% of the way through 2024. Time moves quickly from hey!-it’s-a-brand-new-year to slipsliding right on through it.

At 10%, I’m checkpointing a couple of my goals with some interim thoughts already.

I’ve been moving every day. Mostly running with an occasional long walk or ruck (with a 25 lb weight vest) to give my knees some rest.

A couple of months last year, a friend and I did a 30 day pushup challenge: 100 pushups, every day without fail. The first week sucked but we kept going. 3 or 4 days in there was some pain and soreness. The second and some of the third week was exhausting. But the pain is gone and you keep going even though your whole upper body always feels tired. And then the fourth week, pushups started getting easier. The exhaustion settled down and the sets got easier. 4 sets of 25 became 2 sets of 50 and it always felt like there was more capacity.

2024 - Du mußt dein Leben ändern.

Sat, 06 Jan 2024 16:09:00 +0000

I recently had the privilege to encounter a new poem that relieved me of both my breath and my attention. That poem is called Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rilke. I had to read it over and over and over and every time the last line smacked me in the face. It is powerful because - as Douglas Murray so beautifully articulates - it comes not from the viewer, but from the subject: the torso of Apollo itself.

2023 Review

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 15:39:00 +0000

Well this has been a year! Some wins and plenty of L’s too.

One way to think about goals is to consider them as stated preferences - almost an explanation of parts of how you identify. Then, at the end of the year, you can better understand your revealed preferences based on what you actually achieve. For example, I am a reader. There’s just no denying it.

I generally believe Paul Graham’s thesis that the more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you. Evaluating goals is a good way to relieve yourself of some of your labels. I set a lot of goals last year - too many - and failed a lot because my attention ended up fragmented. At some level that’s good because like any good early 2000’s engineer, I’m good at context switching. But too often in our attention-based economy today, that means you end up feeling busy without accomplishing what you hoped. Trying to fix that was on my mind all of 2023 and it’s not all bad, but there’s still plenty more to do. We’ll get to 2024 soon, but first a bit about 2023!

Best Books of 2023

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 15:39:00 +0000

2023 is over and it was a heck of a year for reading. Perhaps too good, but more on that in 2024. Here it is by the numbers:

64 books
41 nonfiction
23 fiction
7 re-reads
5 started and unfinished (not counted)

Something I’ve thought a lot about this year is where I get recommendations from. What’s interesting is how they vary. For fiction - which is what most people read - I get recommendations just like anyone else.. from friends that have similar tastes as I do. But it’s trickier for nonfiction. Less people read a lot of nonfiction and it’s mostly the stuff that is making cultural headway. Things like Atomic Habits or the latest Isaacson biography or the latest right/left everyone-in-politics-is-out-to-get-you hype book.. you already know these books and they’re on the nonfiction bestseller list.

Tuesday At 4 PM

Tue, 26 Dec 2023 10:39:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I ran into a commitment problem I’ve seen before. I was talking to a local business owner and, like many business owners, they talked about their devotion to their business and their unwavering dedication to their customers. But in the same conversation, they talked about some tedious and repetitive manual actions with a bunch of spreadsheets that would have made their customers job far easier. It would have taken hours to modify these huge spreadsheets and make them better. There was some way to automate them too, but that would have taken hours to do too, so they concluded in a huff, “I’m not going to do that shit.” It was beneath them.

Empathy Is Not The Answer

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 10:39:00 +0000

I received a Christmas card adorned with ornaments each inscribed with different words: “Kindness. Equality. Justice.” I paused to reflect on the meanings of these words and the role of empathy in our lives. To live a good life, it’s important to show kindness and empathy to those around you, whether to a close friend or a stranger struggling with a flat tire. It’s right and true and just. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Notes From Novitate

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 19:14:00 +0000

I attended the first Novitate conference last week on the life and works of Rene Girard. There are a few prominent Girardians in the world today, most notably Peter Thiel. But Girard’s ideas have become prevalent among even more plebeian coastal thinkers like me, mostly because of the book Wanting by the conference’s organizer, Luke Burgis.

The whole day was a whirlwind. I took copious notes. I met some new people. I talked with old friends. I tried to keep up with the ideas flying around. I saw two intellectual heroes of mine in person (Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowen) and got to listen to one of them deliver a profoundly deep oratory on Girardian ideals through history and literature (that was Thiel).

Shower Thoughts

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 19:14:00 +0000

I went to my usual haunt this Saturday morning - a cafe just up the main road. I, with some fine non-fiction; my son with Harry Potter #1 - which he’s finally picked up on his own after I read it to him at the too-young age of 6. We settled in for a leisurely hour with eggs and pancakes, we read our books, we talked, we laughed, we watched the other people going in and out. I resisted as best I could the urge to check my phone, but of course I couldn’t. I checked on a work item, I texted my wife, I looked up a podcast.

Better Partners

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 16:38:00 +0000

My wife and I often joke that it’s a good thing we didn’t meet sooner than we did. We wouldn’t have liked each other near as much.

Why is that? Well, we were different people before we met. Our college experiences were practically polar opposites of each other. There’s no way my wife would have noticed me much in college. I definitely would have noticed her (it would be hard not to), but I wouldn’t have talked to her. We both had a lot of maturing to do. But time marches on and we both kept growing.

The Myth Of Ramanujan

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 13:38:00 +0000

Recently I did some reading about Ed Witten. Witten is notorious for being the very smartest person in rooms filled with very, very smart people: namely physicists and mathematicians. Despite being a quantum physicist, he also won the Fields Medal in mathematics; the only physicist to do so.. He is the progenitor of M-theory, used to unify all of the different variations of string theory. By any measure, he’s a creative intellect with the same kind of raw power as an Einstein or a Schrodinger.

Low Friction Worlds

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 10:27:00 +0000

Our RV trip got me thinking a lot about the power of the modern world. By which I really mean: the internet and the smart phone. We were in constant contact with any service we required, including mobile mechanics. We made changes on-the-fly to different campgrounds. We easily found the gas stops that made highway exit/entry a breeze. Our family/friends shared the experience with us every day.

Imagine doing the same trip in 2005. Remember these?!

Email Conversations On AI, Humanity, Virtue, Meaning

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 11:27:00 +0000

Everyone’s still talking about AI and I’ve had my share of unique conversations. After drafting the idea that English is the new STEM, this one conversation really stood out. It’s the dialogue where a decent number of the ideas for that essay grew (and I reused a few almost verbatim) but the whole back and forth is interesting enough to stand on it’s own. Some of Peter’s ideas around transcendence, wisdom and morality are especially thoughtful. They really hit home.

English Is The New STEM

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 11:27:00 +0000

Every time I sit down with a blank sheet in front of me I’m scared and excited. I’ve usually spent the last day or two grappling with some text or interview or idea in my head. I’ve had some moments of clarity but I’m still working it out. That is, so they say, one of the primary reasons to write: to figure out what it is we actually think.

And so I try it. Over and over. I sit down excited to breathe into the world the uniquely interesting and incredibly deep thoughts I’ve been thinking. Battle ensues. Some days I win and some days the empty page remains empty. The words I get out are never what I expect and they prove that too often those deep thoughts I’m so proud of.. aren’t that deep. Or insightful. Or beautiful. But they are mine.

Strong and Weak Problems

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 09:05:00 +0000

I just read Adam Mastroanni’s piece Science is a Strong Link Problem and my first reaction is: finally! Adam is one of my favorite new writers, ever since he publicly called for the extirpation of the peer review system. I’d never heard of this strong link idea, but it was like a missing puzzle piece for me. I’ve long thought that different people or groups approach problems by trying to manage edge cases and that this edge case management produces most of the contention that exists in policy debates.

A Practical Guide To Glamping (With A Rental RV)

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:05:00 +0000

A cross-country RV trip is on a lot of people’s bucket list. We’ve gotten a ton of “I’ve always wanted to do that!” over the last few weeks and I’ve had several people ask about how we setup and planned this trip, so I wanted to try to consolidate some of the key practical points about it in one place. If you want some more info, there’s a whole bunch here.

Impractical Notes On Glamping

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 10:05:00 +0000

This is a collection of thoughts, random musings, and brainfarts I had and wrote down while on the road. There’s lots more from our trip, including some practical info, and here’s the place to start. By the way, we call it glamping because if you know Maureen and I, and let’s be honest here, we’re way to bougie for a tent. Our kids nicknamed our RV The Glamper and it stuck the whole way.

South Dakota

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 09:05:00 +0000

Leaving the Tetons was difficult. We had 3 nights in one place and the place was magical. But we had more to see. We got up before sunrise, packed the kids in the RV (still asleep), and the Tetons gave us the best sendoff with the brightest orange sunset turning the mountains pink.

Before we get to South Dakota, let’s talk about Wyoming for a second. We came in from Idaho on the west and saw dots of towns and farms before we got to Jackson. And of course the national park was teeming with people enjoying the sites. Once we turned east though, it changed quickly. Wyoming is seriously empty. We got gas in Shoshoni (population: 471) on the way to Casper (and saw a cowboy with actual spurs on his boots!) and it’s a good thing we did. It’s funny - when you drive across Kansas it feels empty. But there’s an exit every once in awhile with a rundown gas station or a farm road with a tractor lumbering along or rows of crops. Wyoming teaches you that Kansas is actually quite busy. In Wyoming there’s a road and green grass hills and.. that’s it. No exits, no side roads, no cars. We went 15-20 miles at one point without even passing a car going the other way. For perspective, Maryland has a population per square mile of 648. Kansas has a whopping 36 people per square mile. And Wyoming, with the lowest population of any state in the union, has just FIVE. It’s wild.

The Tetons

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 08:37:00 +0000

We met a family in Idaho with 3 kids that was on the way to the Tetons the next day for their second trip. They had come from Washington state and met up with extended family in Idaho for the 4th before moving on. We got some great recommendations from them for the drive to Wyoming and we tried them all out. And they nailed it!

They also proved that we weren’t crazy to like this lifestyle so much. During Covid they got out of dodge and spent 8 months on the road with their young kids. Just this year did they rejoin the usual schedule of school and sports activities. Hearing (and seeing) the peace and comfort they had together was affirming that we weren’t off our rockers.

Week 2!

Wed, 05 Jul 2023 09:49:00 +0000

All of a sudden it’s been a week since I last had a chance to get some words down. Since then we’ve gone 1500 miles, hit temps of 107 and 52, had a wedding, a flat tire, and hell of a good time. It looked like this.

We left Arches and drove across Utah, stopping at The Creamery for lunch on the way for some pretty amazing mac n cheese. Then we headed to Zion for two amazing days. Zion is everyone’s favorite. Zion is an amazing combination of mountains, canyons, desert, and the bright blue Virgin River. Add the relaxed town of Springdale just outside the park entrance and you’ve got the right combo of scenic and bougie for us.

2000 Miles Down

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 19:49:00 +0000

Yesterday we didn’t drive at all. We hiked enough and I was exhausted enough that I genuinely looked forward to relaxing in the driver’s seat for a few hours today. The locals didn’t seem to like Garden of the Gods but it was just right for our family and there was plenty of rock scrambling and views to keep us all excited. In the afternoon we visited the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo - rated one of the best zoos on the continent. It’s up at 6700 feet on the side of the mountain with forever views looking east. The giraffe exhibit is the clear highlight. You can feed them lettuce at head height about 15 feet up. The kids ate it up and so did we. Then it was back to the RV park for some fun in the water park and a relaxed evening before the next leg.

Road Trip 2023 - Day 3

Sun, 25 Jun 2023 19:49:00 +0000

We’re on Day 3 now and in sunny and gorgeous Colorado Springs!

Day 2 was a tad more hectic than expected. Our generator is working again thanks to a great mobile mechanic in Illinois. And it’s a good thing because we needed it yesterday; the entire drive across Missouri was 97-99 degrees and there’s a big volume of air in the RV with 5 people. We kept it near 80 the whole time.

Road Trip 2023 - Day 1

Fri, 23 Jun 2023 20:20:00 +0000

We’re one day into this. 10 hours. 673 miles. A lot of bumps. Some memories already.

So far, we’re cruising. We left at 0500 and I did all of the driving today to get us out of the busy east coast. Maureen will jump in and help on the way through Kansas. The driving wasn’t bad. Seating positions in bigger trucks are way better and I just threw on some podcasts and rolled.

Howmidoin?

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 08:52:00 +0000

Three weeks have flown by. So what’s happened?

Week 2 was intermittent. Life is busy and I’m not carving out the regular time I need. This is not a problem of making the time but a problem of priorities. One of the realizations that I’ve had is that there’s no lightbulb moment for motivation and effort. There’s just a long, slow push uphill. A friend said to me recently that we’re at a time in our life where what really matters is the effort, not the results. It’s time to just keep showing up and pushing, right Sisyphus?

One Week In

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 16:56:00 +0000

I set myself up a week ago with a goal and a schedule, so as to avoid simply having a perpetual dream that can’t become real. So, how am I doing?

By the numbers: I’ve sat down to write 6 out of the last 7 days, with a pass on Sunday. Including that big fat zeroburger, I’ve averaged 805 words/day (1000 words/day not including the zero). This is progress. It is good.

A New Goal and Schedule

Tue, 30 May 2023 12:36:00 +0000

Last week was all about getting some reps in. As much as writing is a big component of my psyche, I’m not willing to commit to publishing near enough of what I produce. And that’s because it’s a hobby. I’m a hobbyist. Which has made this Kevin Kelly quote haunting to me.

“If your goal does not have a schedule, it is a dream.”

That sentence leaves a horrible aftertaste of bitter ash and loathsome regret. I dream about writing. And I do a bunch of it, but it is unscheduled, undisciplined and un-completed.

A Random Note on Cost of Living

Fri, 26 May 2023 09:00:00 +0000

I wanted to state a brief, obvious point. I think when most people think about the cost of living, they look at maps like this and think: it’s really cheap to live in the green areas and that’s good!

And maybe it is, but you always need to transpose it on a map like this and remember that it’s cheap to live where your annual income is lower. And that’s bad.

AI Mood Affiliations

Thu, 25 May 2023 16:14:00 +0000

I love throwing ideas for poems at ChatGPT. It does a good job at doggerel and a decent job at anything more. Which means it’s better than almost all of humanity and faster too. Anyway, here’s two of my favorite examples:

Write a poem about a person using ChatGPT to write a poem. Since I am asking you to write this poem, be extra ironic in your response and use tools of recursion and meta-analysis to aid in your narrative and irony. Choose a style and verse that someone using ChatGPT to write a poem would use (and tell me what they are and why)

We Need More Hemp - AI and Curated Internet Gardens

Wed, 24 May 2023 14:23:00 +0000

A good friend read a post of mine on this here parochial blog mere hours after I wrote it. I asked him how he saw it so fast and this is what he said:

It’s funny. I deleted my Facebook app like 7 years ago. I never got IG or Twitter but I still crave dopamine hits. So then I got hooked on news sites like NYT and FreePress and National Review and The Atlantic. Then I blacklisted those from my phone. But I still need dopamine hits. So now I compulsively check your blog. It’s like going from cocaine to cigarettes to hemp.

Anti-Bucolic

Tue, 23 May 2023 10:30:00 +0000

One of my biggest critiques of the environmental movement is a kind of false optimism about the primacy of nature. There’s an underlying believe that Mother Nature knows better than humans and that, left to her own devices, she will provide an optimal world of teeming life.

Freeman Dyson has the best summary of this conflict between what he calls the naturalists and the humanists:

The Naturalists:

Naturalists believe that nature knows best. For them the highest value is to respect the natural order of things. Any gross human disruption of the natural environment is evil. Excessive burning of fossil fuels is evil. Changing nature’s desert, either the Sahara desert or the ocean desert, into a managed ecosystem where giraffes or tuna fish may flourish, is likewise evil. Nature knows best, and anything we do to improve upon Nature will only bring trouble.

Time To Build

Mon, 22 May 2023 18:13:00 +0000

I’m not going to lie, I ripped this title off from an excellent book. Because like everything else, of course this relates back to a book I read. It’s time to build again.

Life has seasons. Some of those seasons ebb and there needs to be a break and a low time. Some of the seasons are hyperactive flow and full of energy and production. Lately it’s been a bit of a low time. But it feels like it’s time to roll again.

Thiel Answers

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 22:42:00 +0000

Peter Thiel is renowned and vilified in equal parts: he’s one of the most rebellious members of the public intellectual clique, and he wears his non-conformity on his sleeve. Earlier this year he gave a fantastic speech to the Oxford Union and he starts it off by asking a rather contrarian question: what is the single antonym for diversity.

The answer is most excellent. The antonym for diversity is university.

Thiel also has a famously contrarian interview question: “Name an important truth very few people agree with you on”. I love this question. It forces you not just to think but think about what’s unique or different about what you think. And then you need to decide just how much of your differences you’re willing to share.

All The Trappings

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 14:14:00 +0000

When I first started woodworking, I was hyperfocused on what my work area looked like. I started out in the garage under our house with just a circular saw and no real idea what I was doing. Once I figured out how to make “square” cuts with a track saw, my wife bought me a magazine all about workshops. It was filled with gorgeous pictures of impeccably setup shops. Every tool was in it’s place, with lines of chisels or handplanes or blades or custom-designed cabinets lining the walls. I’m a big fan of Philip Morley and his shop is clearly well-stocked:

AI Grab Bag

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 06:40:00 +0000

Human Sides of AI

AI is everywhere. ChatGPT, Bing, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, DALL-E. Everyone is talking about them and the consensus perspective seems to be 80% amazement and 15% puzzlement and 5% scared. Those ratios seem a bit off to me. I’m closer to 30/30/40.

Don’t get me wrong, ChatGPT is impressive as hell. The concerns I have are about the ecosystem: what the trust and safety layers around the tools look like, how well some people have been able to hack them, how completely inept we are in understanding the derivation of the answers and, most importantly, how incredibly ready people are to turn over the definition of truth to a tool like this.

Generative Conversations

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 06:23:00 +0000

I just had lunch with a friend. It was a couple hours long and we talked about everything from Tesla product positioning to the role of the Ten Commandments in society, from sex to the nature of Girardian terror and social media, from the idea of dematerialization to the effects increasing wealth has on consumer buying habits. I learned a lot from him - I always do - but I learned even more from the combination of us both talking things out.

Sharp Edges

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 12:38:00 +0000

This little treatise called Caviar Cope was making the rounds in the last week or two. It properly decries and laments the declining state of media today, as any philosopher of the age worth their salt should. And it resonated too. I live some of this, not as an elite, but as a declasse and faux-elite PMC as much as I’m loathe to admit it. I love the All-In podcast. I felt sucked in to White Lotus (although I did stop after a couple episodes). But the final point is far more striking:

Let's Go 2023!

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 11:38:00 +0000

Let’s GO

2022 was far more of a transition year than I realized. I got to spend a huge amount of time focused on family and friends. I had great work coupled with the flexibility to start building the routine that I wanted. Looking back, there isn’t much I would change. Except, of course, my attitude. And myself.

“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.” -Robert Pirsig

2022 Year In Review

Tue, 03 Jan 2023 11:07:00 +0000

2022 Review!

What. A. Year.

2022 was a year of big changes. Boats. Schools. Schedules. Looking back at my goals, I think I had the right ideas. With so much change this year, it was important to focus on the basics. Whether that was successful or not.. well, let’s see.

6 AM

Hahaha. I got up with my kids at 6:50 for school. The whole idea of this was to get ahead of the rest of the world for a little while in the morning. It just didn’t happen.

2022 Books!

Mon, 02 Jan 2023 12:01:00 +0000

2022 had some good ones.. here they are!

How The World Really Works by Vaclav Smil. Smil has become one of my favorite science writers. He ignores all the bullshit and cultural nonsense around the most important questions today and gets right down to what matters: physics and math. He calculates some incredibly fascinating numbers like the amount of oil it takes to grow a pound of tomatoes (a lot, by the way) and explains why concrete and ammonia are still so important. A great starting point for anyone that wants to understand the modern world and why fossil fuels still have a very long way to carry us.
Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier. This was the last book of the year but it hit hard. Jaron makes several crystal clear arguments for how social media is stealing our attention, making us dumber, making us assholes and coercing us into more polarizing and consumptive behavior. It’s scary to admit that this affects you too - that you aren’t much different than everybody else. But in the eyes of social media, you’re just a statistic to manipulate. They drive “engagement” as addiction in an effort to get the largest audience possible for their real customers: the advertisers.
That’s not to say that a ton of incredible leaps have occurred because of social media. More human connection over distances can be good and some improvements in our daily lives are so huge that we couldn’t even imagine our world today 30 years ago. None of this would have been possible without aggregating the insane amount of data we have on people. But just remember: “If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.”
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Well. What a relaxing, delightful read. We get to see a changing Russia through the eyes of an un-personed former Count of the Russian Court now imprisoned in the world-class Metropol Hotel in Moscow. The characters are fascinating, and the drama is real but subtle.. until it isn’t. It doesn’t drag on, but it is slow in the same way as a rendezvous with an old friend for tea can last hours because the conversation is so great. And now, I’m ready to open a bottle of Chateuaneuf-du-Pape.
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to Long Term Travel by Rolf Potts. I’ve been thinking about travel a lot and for all sorts of good and bad reasons. This one came so highly recommended that it was almost impossible to live up to expectations but that’s a fault of the recommenders, not the book. Potts takes you through the details and practical parts of long-term travel without ever dropping a sort of mystical attitude towards the experiences you’ll accumulate. Above all, he reminds us of the purpose of travel: living an interesting life and understanding more of the world around you.
The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan. Another perennial favorite, Zeihan explains why globalization is failing and how our world might look as that happens. He predicts the demise of China, the decomposition of global shipping lanes, and the largest financial shift we’ve seen since Bretton Woods. He then works up from the basics of materials and industry - Vaclav Smil style - to look at which areas of the world will deteriorate and which will thrive.
Back Blast by Mark Greaney. I’d be completely bonkers not to have a Greaney book on here. I discovered the Gray Man series in September and flew through 7 of these in a couple months. They’re a great ride - tons of action and lots of movement and he even fits some character development in there (slowly). Back Blast is the fifth one in the series and the only one that takes place in the States, which makes it extra fun. If you want a fun beach read, dive in.
Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. This is a snapshot of what the country looked like in 1960. Not what we remember in the news or on the cover of the Times, but the real country. The farms, towns, country roads, and brand new highways that made up a far larger and disconnected landscape than the America we live in today. It’s a time capsule and a reverie on travel, new adventures, culture, and America.
Wanting by Luke Burgis. 2021 was the year of mimetic theory, at least in tech circles. It shouldn’t be surprising that mimetic theory is so popular in Silicon Valley - most of the companies generate revenue directly on the back of mimetic principles! This is a book that forces us to look inward and examine ourselves, no matter how uncomfortable that might be. It draws out some of the fundamental tenets of the human social creature and presents Girard’s ideas - which can be difficult to grasp - in clear examples. And it asks a couple of questions that have continued to haunt me since I read it: “Why do you want what you want?” and “What do you want to want?”
The Hundred Year Marathon by Michael Pillsbury. I don’t understand China. I don’t think most people do. In America we mythologize them as the next Great Power, because we need an Other, but there’s a higher likelihood that they suffer from a demographic catastrophe and collapse. This book helped unpack the cultural and strategic differences of the CCP and gives a great starting point for trying to understand how China thinks. Hint: it’s nothing like us.
The Age of AI: And Our Human Future by Eric Schmidt, Henry Kissinger, and Daniel Huttenlocher. What a motley set of authors! I hope I’m still writing books on exciting new topics when I’m 99 like Kissinger. AI threatens to change a lot about our world. It’s an alien intelligence - not just artificial - meaning we don’t really understand how it works. The implications that this is going to have over the next few decades is difficult to predict. Where most people are focused on the near-term craziness or the technical achievements, The Age Of AI explores some of the societal and policy questions that need to be answered for all this world-changing new tech.

Honorable Mentions

I had high hopes for a couple books that didn’t quite make the cut. I still wanted to put them here though, because for the right reader, they could be really something.

Our Dumpster Fire Record

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 17:26:00 +0000

Twitter, the media, and your neighbor Deborah with the bad dye job all agree: the sky is falling and the world is ending.

Is that true? Somebody from 1980 would look around today and not recognize a lot of the tech we have now. But go back earlier.. someone transported from any time before the 20th century would look around in wonder and amazement. Our fancy screens and cars and technology are the first thing they’d notice, but then they’d notice all of the healthy, care-free kids running around. And that there aren’t any people walking around with horrible skin problems. And that our clothes were all colorful and different. And that there’s no shit in the street.

Where Tigers Live

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 11:05:00 +0000

Here’s a fun google search for kids: “Which country has the most tigers”

The answer is India, which is what Google tells us without even a link. And then there’s a gazillion links that back that up. India, India, India. There’s about 3,000 tigers in India.

But there’s a big fat caveat, which is easier to see in the WorldAtlas version: “Countries With The Greatest Number Of Wild Tigers”

Wild. Tigers.

Ok, so here’s another fun google search:
“Which country has the most tigers in captivity” And suddenly you get questions in Google like “are there more tigers in the US than in the wild?” and a whole bunch of interesting articles painting an entirely different narrative. By this story, there are north of 5,000 tigers in the US, mostly in Texas and Florida, and they easily outnumber the total population of wild tigers in the rest of the world.

Intentions and Power

Fri, 18 Nov 2022 14:24:00 +0000

I had a few long drives in the last couple weeks, so I decided to actually get all the way through Balaji’s epic 8 hour podcast interview with Lex Fridman. I’m glad I did - Balaji spins out ideas at an alarming rate.

One of the more impressive parts of the talk is around the nature of regulation, risk and safety in organizations. Balaji talks alot about the FDA and the power of their regulatory process. He compares what the FDA does to the far more in-your-face and well known security theater of the TSA and airport screening. He rails against the absurdity of everyone taking their shoes off twenty years after 9/11. It does nothing, he says, except promote the facade that the government is doing something.

Consumption Is Still Consumption

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 10:51:00 +0000

I just watched an excellent interview of Peter Thiel, given by Peter Robertson of the Hoover Institute. It’s a dive into the political alternatives being offered by the American political parties, the role of growth in America, and some of the geopolitical landscape across the world (Ukraine, China, etc.). It’s great. You should watch it.

After I watched it, I went for a run. And realized I hadn’t yet written anything that day. That was a problem.

The Talent Trap

Thu, 13 Oct 2022 16:51:00 +0000

Lots of people want to be good at stuff. Like Lando Norris. Lando is about to be the lead driver for the McLaren F1 team at just 22. He’s an incredibly gifted driver with mountains of natural talent. He also works on it non stop. He is obsessed with winning. He’s in the simulator for hours and hours. He trains daily. Even his R&R time is spent playing games he’s desperate to win (golf).

Judgement

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 10:26:00 +0000

It is so easy to cast judgement.

Judgement is dangerous for one obvious reason and one rather insidious reason.

Judgement means you’re looking at other people and doing a comparison. We can’t even help the comparison part. Humans are hierarchical creatures. When we cast judgement, we’re trying to measure up. Do they have more than me? Can I run faster than her? Do I look better than him? Haha look at that stupid thing they just did! Judging means caring about the Joneses and whether you can keep up. It means thinking about being better relative to others instead of being better absolutely. It’s zero sum.

Luxury Beliefs

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 12:15:00 +0000

We just traded my wife’s giant Yukon XL Denali for a Sienna Hybrid. We went from 14 mpg on premium gas to 36 mpg on regular. It feels good! We’re helping the environment!

That self-congratulation lasted about five seconds. We didn’t get the Sienna to help the damn environment, even though there’s no doubt that the environment needs helping. We got it because it was cheaper and better for our family. It’s easier to maneuver around school parking lots. It has more space and better features. And it sips gas at an amazingly low rate.

The Educational Value of Copywriting

Wed, 21 Sep 2022 13:58:00 +0000

My son just started at a new school and for the last two weeks I’ve been watching him struggle through 25 math problems for homework. Every. Single. Night.

What happens when you have to copy down the problem? If you’re 8 years old, it starts out taking awhile. The good news is we’ve gone from almost 3 hours down to about an hour. We’re still grinding the time down. The problems aren’t hard and he usually knows the answer. Most of the time is whining and complaining and distraction. All he has to do is write down the problem and the answer.

Why I Run

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 11:33:00 +0000

I went to Disney with my family earlier this year, and it was not my best moment. There was some extended family drama leading up to the trip that need not be rehashed; suffice to say the trip wasn’t originally my idea and I felt a little forced. We were supposed to fly down. I don’t like flying at all and I haven’t done it in about ten years.

The week before the trip turned into a self-torture session for me. I was an anxiety-driven mess for a bunch of unrelated reasons, but my brain decided to build a downward spiral from all of them that crystalized into a fixation around flying.

Read What Those Around You Write

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 13:03:00 +0000

I write more than most people. I accept that, even though it makes me sad. I remain convinced that writing is a critical component of thinking. So critical, in fact, that our opinions and ideas are less well-formed than we’d care to admit. I had to write for awhile to even realize that. And it made me far more humble about most of my opinions. Even people that write a lot can’t write about everything, which means most of my ideas will remain cracked and half-built. And that’s totally fine. Optionality, I am learning, is a first-world curse; a thing that looks great but can actually can ruin a lot.

DALL-E - Your Kid's Directed Drawing Will Never Be The Same

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 13:22:00 +0000

DALL-E has been taking corners of the computer science community and the internet by storm. People are dropping their jaws with exactly what it can do. It hasn’t exactly made many big-time news sources, but it should because dropping jaws is the right reaction.

DALL-E is an artificial intelligence computer program that takes text and creates images. It’s much easier to show you what it can do first than tell you. Ready? Here we go..

We Are All Cyborgs

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 11:22:00 +0000

Cyborgs On The Toilet
Connected and Disconnected
- No GPS
- Real Risk
Recorded and Private
Relationships and Audience
- Democratization and Overton Windows
- Mimesis
Memory and Cache
- Atomic Chunks
Homo Techno - The Cyborg
- Computing The Future
So Now What?
A Diversity of Outcomes
Appendix: Future Trends
Resources

Cyborgs on the Toilet

Take a look around the next time you’re out in public and you’ll see lots of cyborgs. Every single person you see that isn’t actively talking - and some that are - is looking at, swiping, scrolling or tapping on a device. It’s usually a phone, but occasionally a watch, a tablet, or a FitBit. Every dead space or silence in your day can now be filled by the small light of a screen. If you’re in line at the store and the check-out clerk is working, that’s a solid 15 seconds of phone time. At a stop light you’ve got a good 30 seconds at least, and that guy honking and yelling behind you acts as an alarm. Commercial breaks during the big game get filled with your very own customized feed of information 12 inches from your eyeballs.

WLI5

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 08:59:00 +0000

My five year old daughter is obsessed with her letters, so she sits down often to do some writing or doodling on scraps of paper. She picks up her pen and starts pulling it down the page in what she wants to be a straight line. It comes out broken and scraggly. Ignoring any lack of semblance to the Platonic ideal, she connects the pen again and draws another crooked line. Then another. And then she grins up at me and says, “That’s an M”. If I squint, I can see an M. Undeterred and incredibly happy, she starts on her next letter. Another minute or two passes and we finally have her name - Maggie - diagonally down the page with squiggly Ms and crooked Gs. And she’s giddy. And she keeps going. And soon I can actually read her name and she’s drawn a pretty unicorn too.

Hyperbolic Discounting and Cashflow

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 08:45:00 +0000

Hyperbolic Discounting

Back in 1970, a couple of Stanford psychologists conducted an interesting little experiment. They took young children into an empty room and showed them a treat on the table, usually a couple of animal crackers. The children were told they could eat them if they wanted, but that if they waited 15 minutes, they’d get two treats instead of just one. The idea was to see what correlations existed between the children that could delay their gratification and those who went for the immediate treat. Follow-up studies correlated the ability to delay gratification early with better SAT scores, educational achievement and even adult BMI scores. They did another followup that was famously called the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment.

Constraints For Kids

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 14:25:00 +0000

A couple months ago, Elon Musk got called out for the sin of being so successful that 2% of his wealth would supposedly solve world hunger. In typical Elon fashion, he responded directly. As one does.

If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 14, 2018

No surprise really, the head of the United Nations WFP changed tack immediately and confirmed that 6 billion dollars would NOT, in fact, end world poverty.

China and Incommensurability

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 08:43:00 +0000

I’ve never really understood China, so I’m reading a book about China. It’s called The Hundred Year Marathon and it’s opened my eyes to quite a lot so far. In particular, it’s clear that I’ve never really understood Chinese central planning. My naive impression has been that China opened it’s doors sometime a few decades ago and let the capitalist party in under Deng, that they’ve been moving down this path and developing for a long time, but that it’s still a single party system with a ruling Politburo that can pull all sorts of evil or unforeseen shenanigans like putting billionaires under house arrest or taking over Hong Kong or persecuting the Uyghurs endlessly or making Bitcoin illegal. My chyron would be: Communist Bad Actor Keeps On Central Planning. Right, there’s a reason I don’t write chyrons.

2022 Systems

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 09:35:00 +0000

Here we go

2022 is here! 2021 was amazing. I wrote about it, believe it or not. It turned out not at all how I expected, but I loved every second. It also made me think a bit more about 2022 and this whole goal-writing process. As per longwinded tradition, this will not simply be a bulleted list. There is a list, but before we get to that, let me tell you about my favorite Christmas present.

2021 Review

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 10:37:00 +0000

And while Lenin read a book on Marx

A quartet practiced in the park

And we sang dirges in the dark

The day the music died

2021 was supposed to be the year the pandemic died (Miss American Pie), which only seems half true. Loads of people got on with their life, including us, but we’re 2 years on from learning about covid-19 and lots of other people are panicking (or feeding on panic) about a variant that, just like the Spanish Flu, seems to have evolved to be more transmissible and more mild. Let’s hope it represents the end of Covid.

Best Books of 2021!

Sun, 02 Jan 2022 11:37:00 +0000

This has become a yearly post - a listing of the top books of the year. So here we go!

Pappyland by Wright Thompson. On the surface, this is the story of a famous bourbon, but reflected underneath is a much deeper rumination about lifetimes and legacies. I proudly own one half gone bottle of Pappy’s and I thought I’d love this book as a matter of pride, but it ended up being a lot more than I bargained for. Thompson explains why legacy matters, why it’s so hard and scary to live up to it, and why bourbon is the patron drink of the indefatigable American spirit. The next time I have a sip of Pappy’s 20, it will have a renewed meaning for me.
How To Get Rich by Felix Dennis. This one came recommended by Sam Parr from his podcast, and he described it exactly right: it looks a little cheesy and a little ridiculous, but the content is pure gold. Dennis doesn’t pull any punches. He describes the mistakes he’s made, what “rich” really means, the debauchery that came with the high life, and the reasons why you may not really want to get rich. When my teenager naively tells me they want to be rich, this is the book I will give them.
Write Useful Books is the second book I’ve read by Rob Fitzpatrick. Both were short and useful. This is a very practical and focused guide on exactly how to give your audience their money’s worth and how to make sure that they do the hard work in growing themselves bigger. A must for anyone that aspires to write a useful book.
Disunited Nations by Peter Zeihan. I read two books by Zeihan this year, both excellent. He’s a geopolitical analyst who, in easy and simple prose, breaks down complex geopolitics and history to explain why the world is how it is and where it is going in the next few decades. I’ve read a few books on geography and geopolitics and it continues to amaze me how much of our modern, connected world is still underpinned by geography and demographics. If you want to know why the U.S. Navy is so important, what will happen when globalization starts reversing, why Argentina, Turkey, and France are all resurgent, and the ways in which China or Saudi Arabia can fail, this is the book for you.
Galileo’s Middle Finger by Alice Dreger. There’s a line in K-PAX where Kevin Spacey’s character (supposedly an alien) eats a banana whole - with the peel on - and then remarks, “Your produce alone has been worth the trip.” That’s how I feel about this book’s title; the metaphor alone was worth it. Galileo was reburied a few decades after his death and the Catholic Church had time to simmer down a bit. When this happened someone - in a fit of hagiography - cut off Galileo’s middle finger so that it could be venerated. Why his middle finger? Well, this is the finger that 16th century Italians used to point, so it’s what Galileo used to point towards the heavens. In the modern world, his middle finger has a new and delicious dimension of irony and rejection of arguments from authority. The rest of the book holds up to the metaphor. Dreger explores the relationship between science and activism through some of the most hot-button issues of today: the reasons behind trans women’s desire to transition, studies of ethnic peoples in Brazil, and intersex people’s place in the LGBTQ world. It ends up being a study about things that you can’t say out loud.
You can still visit Galileo’s finger in Florence, by the way.
The Power of the Powerless by Vaclav Havel. Written in 1970s Czeckoslovakia, Havel explores what it means when a greengrocer puts a sign in his window that says “Workers of the world unite!” I had heard the phrase, but never in context and never with the complete backing of Havel’s philosophy of life in a “post-totalitarian” world. A surprisingly useful and relatable read today to understand the nature of signaling, psychology, and the Overton Windows that define what we can - or what we must - say, whether we believe it or not.
Layered Money by Nik Bhatia. This is probably the least well-written book on the list, but it’s an excellent summary of the history of our current banking and federal reserve system and how cryptocurrency may be changing it going forward. The idea of layers is a useful metaphor for understanding the value of gold (or bitcoin), fiat currency, and fractional reserve banking. This book is a great launching point for anyone looking to understand more about the future of the financial system.
Afterlives of the Saints by Colin Dickey. What a wild and weird and (at times) disagreeable book. A great one for any Christian to read to remember that the principles of faith and humanity are broader and crazier than we sometimes care to think. From the Stylites spending their lives standing on a tower to the Skoptsky sect in Russia, this one is not for the faint of heart or the narrow-minded.
Unsettled by Steven Koonin. A huge segment of the elite will not like this book, it goes against the feted narrative. Perhaps that’s why it’s so important. Koonin breaks down some more specific issues around climate change, explains some of the conclusions of the IPCC and denotes the differences between something like a peer-reviewed scientific study and an editorialized summary for policymakers. As someone who’s tried to write out and understand more about not just climate change, but also the complexity of our human reaction to it, this one was right up my alley.
Billy Summers by Stephen King. What a genius. Anything by King I’ve read seems to be a masterwork. The best novel I read this year by far and an unforgettable story. Plain language and human emotion. I won’t soon forget the House of Everlasting Paint.
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. I feel a bit sheepish putting this here. I first read it maybe six or seven years ago and have read it again every year. Not only is it exceptionally good writing and characters, but it’s thought provoking in a way that only good science fiction can be. Scalzi explores some of the future problems of humanity like human/computer symbiosis, consciousness decoupled from body, love and genetics, human bias against aliens, and space travel. What’s really great is that these are just practical problems encountered by the characters in his universe, and some of his answers to these ideas are a part of the story. I love this book and want everyone I know to read it.
BONUS: Find Your Six by Patrick Kilner. This was one of the most fun books for me to read this year for a great reason: it’s the first published book I’ve read by a friend that I’ve known for a long time. As a bonus, it turned out to be a great read, with easy language and a good theme. An excellent guide for developing authentic business relationships and exercising magnanimity. I hope I get the chance to read more published books by people I know!

The Value of Immigration

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 18:56:00 +0000

Changing Trends

In 1798, Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population. In it, he correctly described the existing data that showed the population was increasing faster (geometrically) than the food supply (linearly) creating a potential future of doom and catastrophe. Malthus’ ideas have been recycled over and over, but we’re two hundred plus years on from the original idea and we’re still waiting for the doom and catastrophe part.

Unusual Books For Teenagers

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 08:32:00 +0000

I’m in the middle of re-reading Doyle Brunson’s classic poker book: Super System. It popped into my mind again recently because of some Twitter conversation or other, and I realized my copy was torn in two and borrowed out from my library to someone and won’t ever be seen again. So I bought another copy and have been shredding through it.

It’s still the canonical book on poker, but it’s also much, much more. Reading it again, I realize that it’s at least as much about perspective on life, understanding psychology (yours and others), and knowing when and how to take reasonable risks. These are high quality Life Skills, and at some point I realized that this is exactly the kind of book I want my teenager to read. And I’ve been trying to figure out exactly why that is.

Goodhart's Law, Optionality and 2021 Goals

Sun, 10 Jan 2021 22:42:00 +0000

A new decade has arrived (hey, there was no year zero) and after the batshit crazy end of the last decade, it’s somehow time to try to refocus and think about some objectives and what the next year will bring. I promised myself I would do this without another scree of words before getting to the meat of the actual goals. I managed to be pretty succinct with the 2020 review.

2020-is-suddenly-over-whahappened?!

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 10:12:00 +0000

So 2020 happened. And a lot of it felt like this.

But a lot of it was really great too. In the midst of a lot of angst and frustration and fear and loneliness, 2020 also provided a unique opportunity to try some changes in life. I feel like I took advantage of it.

Which is humbling. And carries a little guilt. It’s hard not to feel guilty after having a year so good when you know so many people had a year with many struggles. It’s important to stay humble, help whenever you can, and keep on going.

Best Books of 2020

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 23:02:00 +0000

Last year I put together a short list of some of my favorite books for the year, along with an (as usual) longwinded explanation. I’m doing it again this year - it was fun - but without a diatribe as a preface. This list excludes some favorite books I re-read this year.

Here they are:

The Revolt of the Public by Martin Gurri was not just good, it was good in weird ways that made me think about meta-things like curation and publishing houses. It’s rare to read a book that so frequently makes you think, “so that’s why that happens.” And not little things either; things like the election of Trump or the Arab Spring. Gurri strings historic paradoxes together from the last few decades and makes them make sense. We really are living in a brand new world.

Curation and The Middle Path of Contrarianism

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 09:11:00 +0000

Earlier this year, I wrote about Stripe Press and the value of curation. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it though, and I continue to think that it’s one of the most important concepts to center around as we walk blindfolded into 2021.

We’re in the middle of the age of the algorithm, and our writings and photographs and music have all been reduced to “content”, as Andrew Sullivan has said. Many of us have gained the entire world of knowledge at our fingertips by losing the ability to seek and follow wisdom. Curation is not about consuming content that is served to you, but about finding and exploring things that you don’t fully understand.

The Untranslatables

Sat, 19 Dec 2020 07:57:00 +0000

Words in other languages

I am fascinated by untranslatable words - words from other languages that have a specific meaning but no English equivalent. We can still express the idea in a sentence of a paragraph, but it has no word equivalent. It still says something about Sapir-Whorf and the influence of language on how we think. “Language is froth on the surface of thought”, as John McCarthy says. This is also a reminder, perhaps somewhat uncomfortable at times, that there are a huge number of languages spoken around the world. Millions and millions of people speak languages we’ve never even heard of like Igbo and Magahi. And their formations can be entirely different too. For example, many Asian languages are tonal and have “tonemes”, which means that the tone, pitch, or inflection of the pronunciation of the word has meaning. Which leads to some crazy poems - this one in Mandarin is compromised of only the word “shi”, but with 22 different meanings based on the tone.

Raggedy and Bloody and Screaming

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 15:33:00 +0000

2020 has been one hell of a year. We’re banging our way through this pandemic the whole way, making things hard on ourselves as usual. We’ve also got fresh wounds this year from the legacy of racism, Jim Crow, and slavery, with reactions that are simultaneously angry, reflective, completely justified, and overwrought. All the Holocaust survivors are slowly dying too, although this has been noticed less in the public venue. Those that remember it as adults are at least in their 90s, and the kids that survived the camps are in their 80s. World War II books have gotten popular again in the last couple years and I think the reason is that there’s a cultural subconscious need to make sure we don’t forget the lessons of evil learned in WW2.

Boggle vs. Ruzzle

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 08:18:00 +0000

Boggle and Ruzzle are two word games I love that seem very similar on the surface but turn out to be quite different.

Boggle is played with 16 die with random letters laid out on a 4x4 grid and an hourglass timer. In two minutes, each player writes down as many 3-letter or longer words as possible. If two players get the same word, neither gets any points. Longer words mean more points (but also more writing time).

Twitter Is The Coworking Space of the Internet

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 10:30:00 +0000

I recently listened to Tyler Cowen’s interview of Sam Altman from 2018. Tyler Cowen is one of the best interviewers out there and Sam one of the most interesting people to interview, making this a treat. In it, Sam expresses his complete disdain for coworking spaces:

Coworking spaces have two big classes of problems. Number one, they are a band-pass filter. Great ideas are fragile. Great ideas are easy to kill. An idea in its larval stage — all the best ideas when I first heard them sound bad. And all of us, myself included, are much more affected by what other people think of us and our ideas than we like to admit. … The other thing is the average level of ambition and willingness to work hard at a coworking space is incredibly low. There’s this reversion to the mean that is not what you want in your life.

The Problem With Voting - Subsidiarity, Parties, and Overton Windows

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 08:25:00 +0000

Twelve years ago during a different election, I was being compelled to vote from every angle and had to write down my reasons why I did not vote. Looking back now that perspective was a bit naive, but there was still something to it.

I find myself in a roughly similar situation today: tons of celebrities, organizations, advertisements, and relatives are telling me about the importance of voting. And just like last time, they’re talking only about the Presidential election. Also just like last time, there’s a narrative of existential crisis, and yet again I find myself completely ambivalent to the intrinsic value of voting.

The Power of Cincinnatus

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 08:28:00 +0000

I am led to relate these particulars for no other reason than to let all the world see what kind of men the leaders of Rome were at that time, that they worked with their own hands, led frugal lives, did not chafe under honourable poverty, and, far from aiming at positions of royal power, actually refused them when offered. For it will be seen that the Romans of to‑day do not bear the least resemblance to them, but follow the very opposite practices in everything — with the exception of a very few by whom the dignity of the commonwealth is still maintained and a resemblance to those men preserved.

The Options

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 11:00:00 +0000

When I was a kid, this was my favorite poster.

I got it pretty early - early enough that I didn’t really understand the punchline. But I LOVED the cars, and I knew I wanted a garage like that. My parents thought it was hilarious, and they kept telling me that school was how you got there.

I’m old enough now to know that really isn’t true. The world has changed since the 1980s. Back then, getting an MBA and becoming an upper-level manager was considered the lower or middle class path to being rich. But education was never the path to actual wealth. Those who get PhDs aren’t statistically of drastically higher income or higher net worth than those with Masters degrees. And a considerable number of the most wealthy people out there dropped out of school to pursue the thing that made them wealthy.

Stripe Press and Curation

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:08:00 +0000

Stripe Press

I just finished The Revolt of the Public by Martin Gurri. It’s an incredible book with the most prescient view I’ve heard yet of what’s been going on in the post-postmodern world of history. I’m already sure it will be one of the best books I’ll read all year. If you want to know why the internet is going crazy, why Trump happened, why Brexit happened, why the Arab Spring happened, this is the book for you. Seriously, everyone should read it.

Warm Pools of Light

Fri, 29 May 2020 09:00:00 +0000

Coronavirus has made me take lots of long walks. It has become a daily habit that’s valuable both physically and mentally.

One of my favorite times to walk is just after sunset, when the sky is still newly dark. The day is winding down, the memory of the sun is still in the warm air, dinner is starting to feel just a little lighter, and there’s a warm glow from all of the windows around the neighborhood.

Exponentials and Revolution

Thu, 28 May 2020 05:00:00 +0000

Exponentials

I’ve been thinking a lot about exponential functions. Specifically how often they can be misconstrued or misappropriated. Our current intelligentsia familiar with this type of math like to remind the more innumerate that exponential growth is incredibly non-intuitive and hard for humans to understand.

Which is true. But there’s a second-order version of this too, which is that even among the mathematical literate (or semi-literate), there is a canned version of exponential growth packed tightly in our heads. Which looks like this:

Vacation vs. Travel

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 10:14:30 +0000

Travel vs. Vacation

We haven’t written on here for awhile. It’s been a busy couple of years, hopefully we’ll catch up on that later.

My wife and I have been talking a lot lately about the ideas of travel and vacation. We both know we don’t really believe in the idea of vacation the way most people do. At the same time, we both want to travel, although for awhile I didn’t communicate that well and my wife didn’t think I wanted to. I made her nervous by the way I talked about it, so I wrote her a letter to try to describe how I thought about the difference between travel and vacation. And that’s what this is.

The Power of Dreams

Sun, 05 Apr 2020 09:31:00 +0000

Goddammit.

That’s all I really have to say. I’m on.. my third started-and-unlikely-to-be-finished novel this time. I’ve got all the time in the world - just like the rest of the world - and yet I’m writing only sporadically. Instead, I’m diving into other ideas, writing more code than I have in awhile, and reading and admiring other people’s words. It’s infuriating.

I’m an optimist and a dreamer. And I’m reasonably smart. So when I start with a novel idea, I come up with a Machiavellian plot scheme and fill in the entire arc. I’ve got the fun and the mystery set out in my head and all I need to do, I think, is serialize it into words.

The Life of the Mind

Sun, 29 Mar 2020 22:09:00 +0000

Sir Roger Scruton died in January at the age of 75. I had the opportunity to see him speak once in DC, long before I read anything by him. He was funny, brilliant, and unapologetically British. I still remember one of his high-brow jokes from that evening:

“It’s important to note that the Church of England is defined not by the first word of its name, but by the third. Which means that all the bishops of the Church of England can essentially be atheist and still carry the main article of the faith!”

Story - Straight and Narrow

Sat, 21 Mar 2020 13:33:00 +0000

Caveat Lector: I wrote this over the winter but haven’t gotten around to editing and finishing it until now. But suddenly, I have loads of time on my hands. Here’s to using it well!

I read On Writing last year, by Stephen King. It’s the best book on writing out there and was a watershed for me, I learned so much. For instance, King says:

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

Formative vs Performative

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 08:04:00 +0000

This past weekend we tuned into a streaming broadcast of Mass amidst the outbreak.

I couldn’t stand it. This has been a long running problem that I wrote about almost ten years ago too. I thought then that it was just the dreadful music. Now I’m wondering if that’s just a symptom of how we treat Mass.

Many of our institutions that used to be formative are now performative. They’re not about shaping, they’re about seeing and - even more so - being seen.

2020 Predictions

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 09:12:00 +0000

I tried predictions once ten years ago and as it turns out, I’m very optimistic and predictions are hard. It’s a useful exercise, and one I’ll try to do on a decadal rhythm. So here we go again!

Extreme Poverty Will Be Halved Again By 2030

In 1990, the UN set a goal to half extreme poverty by 2015. Even by conservative measures, the mark was hit early.

A huge component of the drop happened in Asia, driven by China embracing capitalist methods while dropping everything but authoritarianism from their socialist principles. Thirty years ago, one of the big questions was whether we had enough raw resources and materials for all the billions of people in the world to have a reasonable standard of living. We’ve now answered with an unequivocal “Yes”. Not only are there less poor people today than thirty years ago, but we also added over two billion people to the population total in the same time.

2010 Predictions Review

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 08:41:00 +0000

Ten years ago, I made some predictions. It was bound to fail, unless I turned out to be some kind of Superforecaster. It did and I’m not. Ten years later some of these things sound like the silliest and unlikeliest things that you could imagine.

And that’s really the fun of it.

Trying to make predictions is a rewarding way to try to observe the world and where it’s going. It’s really only a failure if you take yourself too seriously. You’re gonna be wrong, but you’ll learn interesting things along the way; first about your point of view, then later, about observation and outcome.

Think About Being Old

Thu, 20 Feb 2020 09:41:00 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about being old. It’s not just because I’m getting closer and closer to it - I’ll hit 40 this year - although that’s true as well. But it’s actually a wonderful, glorious way to shape how you think about decisions in your life.

That might seem strange. After all, most of us don’t really want to think about the idea of our own death (or we shudder a bit when we do). The only thing we may like to think about less than our death is the idea of what we might be like right before our death.

2020!

Wed, 08 Jan 2020 22:41:00 +0000

2019 is over and done! I reviewed it. I set some goals. I achieved some and didn’t achieve others. I feel good about it too; content with the activity of the year and not particularly unsettled about what is still left to be done. I still like the process of reflecting on the past to see what can be done in the future, and a yearly cycle still feels like a good interval for this process.

2019 Reviewed

Mon, 06 Jan 2020 08:02:00 +0000

2019 was a really good year. It’s also the end to a pretty incredible decade. Decadal reviews are the thing to do right now, so maybe I’ll jump on the bandwagon, but for now here’s 2019!

The Year

Let’s see how I did on these goals:

215
Yoga
Walks
Schedules
5k
Duathlon
Something Longer
New Project

215

Nope, didn’t get there. Again. I hit 229 over the summer. It felt amazing. I kept around 232-235 for most of the year and there’s a decidedly positive difference in how that feels to even 240-250. But I’m still a ways off from where I need to be. I’ve proven that I can make a big change in a relatively short amount of time, so I need to hit that extreme again to make it happen. This will be revisited yet again in 2020.

My Top Books of 2019

Sat, 28 Dec 2019 13:07:00 +0000

Preface

It’s the end of 2019, which means I’ve started my yearly cycle of review and resolution. I call them resolutions because that’s the word people know, but it’s really a series of habits and foci with corresponding goals to keep my competitive mind motivated.

Something I refocused on in 2019, without it being a resolution, was reading. My writing has increased in both volume and complexity, which is good, but I’ve been pulled away from the books that compelled my own words in the first place. Being frank, a large part of that has been the daily siren call of my phone. Like everyone, I’m almost always connected to it. I’ve been trying to sever that connection, which has had fits and starts but has been somewhat successful. (My wife may disagree.)

Education - Working Backwards

Thu, 28 Nov 2019 07:22:00 +0000

Caveat Lector

This started out as a simple idea: to work backwards from the adults we hope our children will be and use this to think about how we raise our kids now. 9,000 words later it turns out there was a lot to say.

The format is also different. Tweetstorms on Twitter have actually become a really interesting way to lay out an argument, set of axioms or principles in a fairly concise way. Two great examples of this are Naval on getting rich and @vgr on Waldenponding.

Greta vs. Mann (and the Lessons of Julian Simon)

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 14:22:00 +0000

This one popped up in my feed yesterday:

Mann vs. Greta https://t.co/Ml4bhMxImP
— Judith Curry (@curryja) November 15, 2019

All of the different dimensions of climate activism are fighting each other for the moral high ground. Greta is fighting for personal responsibility and individual changes; she warns against over-consumerism and requires us all to cut back on everything we use. Mann pushes exclusively for world governing and country-level policy and tax changes to force the entire population to change. Personal responsibility is not only not enough, he says, it’s almost a form of denialism that let’s the federal and world level leaders off the hook.

Keyboards vs. Long Form

Mon, 21 Oct 2019 07:58:15 +0000

I’ve been writing a decent amount this year, including some longer-for-me stuff that I’m reasonably content with. I do all of my writing on my laptop, with a keyboard, and I’ve wondered for awhile if that’s a hindrance at all to actual writing. The problem is that my laptop has multiple purposes that all fight for top billing in my headspace. There’s work, there’s coding, there’s the endless, boundless distraction of the internet, and there’s even the distraction of all the other writing ideas and projects I have sitting in my folder tantalizing me.

The 50% WR Rule

Thu, 10 Oct 2019 07:58:15 +0000

The 50% WR Rule

As I’ve gotten a bit older, I’ve become increasingly interested in being in shape and staying that way for the long run. Over the last few years I’ve been doing everything from powerlifting to 400 intervals, miles, 10Ks, and duathlons. I’m terribly goal-oriented, so of course I’ve had weight or time goals for all of these.

What I’ve realized in hindsight is that you can use World Records as a pretty good gauge for where most people want to be. Just take whatever the world record is, and make it half as impressive. That will be a hard but achievable goal for a person in relatively good shape.

My desk

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 06:02:15 +0000

They say your desk is important. I don’t know if that’s true, but mine is important to me. It sits in a small room in an unimportant corner. The corner is part of a small house in a small town near the beach. If you’re lucky, you can hear the surf crashing on empty mornings when the wind hasn’t woken up yet.

The desk is small too, but I built it myself. It’s two pieces of smooth walnut held together by metal leg pieces turned at an acute angle. I don’t know why everyone likes their strong, square corners. Square is boring. And this fits better in a corner of the room, which is where a desk should go anyway.

Outrage Theory of Opinion

Sun, 21 Jul 2019 13:02:15 +0000

Outrage Theory of Opinion

I’ve been spending a bit more time on Twitter recently - for better or worse, it’s the place where a lot of today’s public intellectual debate occur. Activists, professors, politicians, entrepreneurs, billionaires, and everyday people all trade ideas and blows in one place. It’s a stunning play to see acted out, equal parts beautiful new ideas and decadent outrage.

It’s the outrage that’s got me thinking. A lot of people seem to have it and they seem to have it all the time. They also seem to weigh the value of their opinion based on the righteous level of their outrage; units of screaming is what’s measured on the scale. This type of outrage seems some combination of wrong, selfish, and easy for the outraged, not to mention intellectually dishonest. Most importantly, it isn’t the right value with which to measure opinion.

Our Modern Lifestyle Makes Entrepreneurship Harder

Sun, 07 Jul 2019 09:32:15 +0000

“The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom." - James Clear

I was looking back recently at my Trello board of projects and ideas, sitting at my favorite morning cafe. I had my wallet on the table next to me. It’s a Thread & Leather wallet I got back in 2014 after signing up for the original Kickstarter project. On a whim, I decided to poke at the site and see if Thread & Leather was still around. They are, quietly doing the same thing and fulfilling some number of wallet orders. Their original Kickstarter blew up on them and it took something like 4 years to fulfill all of the original orders.

Beringia, Climate, and the Problem with Experts

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 09:26:15 +0000

Caveat Lector: I am not an expert in any of the below topics. As you’ll read below, I’m not sure how much my lack of expertise actually matters, but it’s at least worth pointing out. As author of this exploration, what I am is merely a somewhat intelligent, reasonably educated, very skeptical person that is curious and interested in lots of different topics across the scientific spectrum, including the process by which science itself is done.

Fart Crowds

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 08:06:15 +0000

Ever been out at dinner somewhere, or with a group of people, and someone let’s one rip? You know, friendly banter, good conversation and then a nice, deep rumbling emanates from an unknown cushion somewhere nearby.

It’s pretty awesome. Most of the time, people pretend it didn’t happen and try to hurry past the awkward silence as quickly as possible. This is actually a distinguishing feature of the relationships.

I remember the first time my wife farted in front of me. We were dating at the time, and sitting on my deck having a fairly serious, deep conversation. I was talking, going on about something or other, and she had a serious look on her face. Then all of a sudden there was a small, feminine pfffffft. If there was ever a cute fart, that was it. Her eyes got really wide, her face got red, and she said, “I farted.” Then we both bowled over laughing, our serious conversation completely obliterated, and us a step closer to knowing we’d be with each other for the rest of our lives.

Resetting the Mortgage Calculator

Mon, 11 Feb 2019 09:26:15 +0000

The dream of home ownership seems to ebb and flow, but in the post-2000s boom era, the challenge of buying a house is even bigger than it used to be.

And I’m going to appear to argue it should be a bit more difficult in the short term. But bear with me, because the long term reward is worth it. I also think what I propose isn’t for everyone. If you’re working hard to get into your first house or if you’re near the bottom of the market in your location, you can pretty much ignore this article. The question you should be asking is whether you should buy at all compared to moving or renting.

Three Frustrations

Fri, 08 Feb 2019 10:09:31 +0000

Winter is always a slog for me, and despite my efforts to remain ever optimistic, Vitamin D deficiencies dictate some negativity. This has been a tough week for a whole bunch of reasons. It’s made me think about the types of frustration that are the worst for me. Here’s my top three.

Distraction

There always seems to be something going on, and somehow all that stuff adds up to nothing. This is my death by a thousand cuts, and it can happen a couple of different ways. Sometimes, there’s just too many externalities and it’s impossible to focus on any damn thing. There’s nothing to do then except accept it, try to deal with or eliminate each externality, and be patient.

Artistry

Sun, 13 Jan 2019 15:01:56 +0000

I know a lot of people use Spotify or Pandora, but for awhile now YouTube has been my jam when I’m at a computer. YouTube Red gets rid of the advertising and their playlists are pretty good. It’s also nice to have the ability to mix music videos and live shows.

I want to point out two videos that have occasionally popped up on my playlists recently. They’re both very striking.

CarMax - The Biggest Pivot Story Nobody's Ever Heard?

Sun, 13 Jan 2019 09:22:56 +0000

CarMax is a monster. They’re a Fortune 500 company. They sell more used cars than any other company in the US. They also average a very nice profit per unit, $2,147 in the first quarter of 2018. That works out to somewhere north of $1.2bn in gross profit for 2018; not too shabby.

And they were spun out of CircuitCity.

WAT? Yeah, my reaction too. CircuitCity for me is a name forever correlated to boring, behind-the-times 1990s consumer interaction. How on earth did a 21st century behemoth like CarMax get spun out of them?

Signal and Noise While Thinking

Sat, 12 Jan 2019 11:04:31 +0000

My favorite place to write is a small breakfast cafe in my neighborhood. I head up there any chance I get, sit down with a Chai Tea and some eggs, and then (hopefully) kick some words out at a reasonable clip. At the same time, I have a wonderful home office that I love and spent quite a bit of time on setting up for myself that I very rarely use for writing.

zOMG 2019 and Why Write Goals?

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 10:02:31 +0000

It doesn’t seem possible. It doesn’t feel real. But 2019 is here. So enter it with zeal.

Practicing poetry is not a goal of mine this year, thank God for you, dear reader. But I do have a few, and they’re listed below.

But first, I wanted to revisit the whole idea of writing down goals. Why do it? And why publish them?

A wonderful friend posited this question extremely well recently, which forced me to revisit my reasoning for taking some time each year to do this. She asked very clearly if meeting goals is the thing that makes one happy and if it’s good to feel content or unsettled based on success or failure. She also wondered if it is better to explore and be open to what happens and discover what God might have in mind.

2018 Wrapped

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 23:25:31 +0000

This last week of the year has been a delightful piece of time off with family and friends, and I’ve been using the time to duck my head around the incoming corner of 2019. But we’re not quite there yet.. before we go all the way to 2-0-1-9, it’s time to look back on the wonder of the last year where, yet again, quite a lot has happened.

Let’s take a look at the list from a year ago first:

I Am Nicer Here

Fri, 28 Dec 2018 21:41:30 +0000

I’m down in DE for a night late in December to check on the house and do some winter chores. It’s been a whirlwind (but relaxing) Christmas week at home, but it’s really nice to be able to pop down here for a quick change of scenery. Maureen and the kids stayed at home (thank you!) which also means I’m taking advantage of every moment I have while I’m here.

Fat People Drink Diet Coke

Fri, 28 Dec 2018 21:25:31 +0000

Now that I have your attention with the not-quite-true clickbait headline, allow me to backpedal ever so slightly, before I drive on. A more accurate thing to say would be that skinny or in-shape people don’t drink Diet Coke.

Now I should elaborate. In the last week or so, I’ve had three Diet Cokes. The week before I think I had three too.

If you’re in the vanishingly small percentage of my readership that doesn’t know me, this is an insanely low number. A more normal day in the recent past would have included a 32 oz. fountain soda and either a can or two additional, or a second fountain soda. Or three.

Federalist 51, Ocasio-Cortez, and Yeats

Sun, 16 Dec 2018 09:55:31 +0000

We’ve got a new incoming Congress in just a month’s time, with a brand new fresh-faced class of freshman. And some of them really are fresh-faced - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York is the youngest woman ever to be elected to Congress at 29 years old. That’s a wonderful achievement by itself, and she’s an idealistic young woman already working to make waves.

Which, quite frankly, I find naive, foolish, and scary.

One Night Of Vacation Was Enough

Sun, 02 Dec 2018 10:16:46 +0000

The weekend before Thanksgiving our family went on our first “vacation” since we bought our beach house. We went up to Hershey Park for the weekend (just one night) with some out of town friends. It was - at the same time - both great and a bit of a mess, and both Maureen and I came away from it with much stronger opinions about vacation.

Hershey Park is about two hours north of us in Pennsylvania, and it’s a very good setup. They’ve got a tour of the chocolate factory, a big park with lots of rides, and a zoo showcasing all sorts of animals from North America. They do it right at Christmas too, all lit up and a two mile long drive through light show. The whole family had a good time, but the kids especially loved it. They went crazy to make their own chocolate bars, ran around to see everything, and were generally excited all the time.

Some Podcasts

Sat, 24 Nov 2018 21:11:31 +0000

I really like Podcasts. They seem to have taken off in a really big way in the last five years, and it’s awesome. Unless you’re a big fan of audiobooks and Audible (I’m not really), it’s the best way to fill an easy commute to work. I’ve got a bunch I listen to regularly, so I thought I’d share my list.

Here they are, in no particular order.

Econtalk. This is the one that really got me into podcasts. Russ Roberts has been interviewing authors, economists, and others on a regular basis for ten-plus years, and the topics are varied and interesting.
Startups For The Rest Of Us. This is a great podcast from the founders of Microconf on the everyday efforts and decisions you need to make when starting a company. It’s a really good and realistic take on the whole process.
Software Engineering Daily. Daily (daily!) interviews on a wide variety of CS and Software topics. Very often great.
Pod Save America. When I want a very left-leaning view of the news, with some good comedic relief.
The Ben Shapiro Show. When I want a very right-leaning view of the news, with some comedic relief.
Intelligence Matters. A former top intelligence and CIA official provides interviews and commentary on current events from an intelligence and foreign affairs perspective.
Three Legs, Four Wheels. Funny British Formula1 podcast.
Elixir Mix. The Devchat.tv podcast for Elixir. Elixir is the language of the future.
Views on Vue. The Devchat.tv podcast for Vue.js. Big fan of Vue, over React and Angular.
Startalk Radio. Neil Degrasse Tyson’s cast on science and astronomy. This is one I skip unless I really like the topic, but the Cosmic Query Q&A sessions are always fun.
Stuff You Should Know. Super entertaining show on all the things you should know including How Vampires Work, Peak Oil, How Condoms Work, How Jet Lag Works, and what makes us yawn.
Indie Hackers. Courtland Allen’s interviews from Indie Hackers. Love this community.
The Changelog. Great software podcast with really interesting (and usually trendy) topics.
The Jordan Peterson Podcast. Jordan Peterson gets a bad rap in a lot of circles, but he’s a brilliant and honest academician and his explorations of psychology and philosophy can be very dense. An occasional listen when I’m in that sort of mood.
Beyond the Grid. Formula1 official podcast with interviews from some of the drivers and other key players.
Starting and Sustaining. Garrett Dimon’s podcast on small software businesses. The production is usually not great, but the content usually is.* NPR How I Built This. Great interviews with founders of interesting companies.
Mark Bell’s Power Project. Interviews with powerlifters and other strength or fitness personalities. Often inspiring, sometimes niche, and usually very lifestyle oriented.
Game of Thrones The Podcast. The eponymously named BaldMove podcast for the show. BaldMove is great.
Game of Owns. Niche and really good Game of Thrones podcast
Watching Westworld. The eponymously named BaldMove podcast for the show.
Tropical MBA. Entrepreneurial stuff.
Homestead Story. Chickens, Cows, Kids, and Catholics. A good friend of mine does this podcast with his wife on his experience starting and living on his farm and growing most of his own food.
The SaaS Podcast. Interviews with entrepreneurs and founders of SaaS companies. Usually really good, although generally focused on larger SaaS companies that have gotten to a pretty good revenue size.
Y Combinator. Good interviews from some Silicon Valley names.
Ruby Rogues. Don’t listen to this as much as I’m not doing anything with Ruby, but it’s a good show and the topics were always on point.
NPR Hidden Brain. An occasional listen for me, but the topics are interesting and I’ve always liked how relatively neutral NPR tries to be on topics.

Write For Your Legacy

Sat, 24 Nov 2018 10:55:31 +0000

It’s a wonderful Saturday morning, just after Thanksgiving, and I’m at my favorite local cafe - Donut King - with my two oldest kids. We just finished up a great breakfast with our books, and now it’s device time. I get to pull out my laptop and “think”. They get to watch some educational videos on my phone, a fairly rare treat.

This is our typical Saturday morning routine, and it’s a highlight of the week for everyone. My wife gets some time by herself, the kids get to go out with Dad and get breakfast, they learn the value of having and reading books all the time, and I get to hang with my kids and then write.

I'm Building Three Instances of General AI

Sat, 10 Nov 2018 10:25:31 +0000

I’m in the process of doing something very controversial. Some even think it’s impossible.

I’m building some AGI systems. Not one, but three. Let me describe them.

The term AGI may be new to some. It’s also called Strong AI. AGI stands for Artificial General Intelligence, and it should be roughly equivalent to human intelligence. The systems most people know as AI right now are considered Narrow, or ANI. That is, we can produce systems that can succeed at human (or even beyond human) levels focused on a very narrow window of skills. We have systems that can beat grandmasters at chess, always win at checkers, or attack the game of Go, but none of these specific systems can also tell the difference between a dog and a cow. They’re all specific. AGI may not have a single skill as strong as any of these examples of ANI, but it can emulate human ability across a lot of different skills and also learn new skills.

Change Is The Master Key

Sat, 03 Nov 2018 08:32:46 +0000

Last weekend was a great weekend back in coastal Delaware, and I want to tell you about a myth I’ve finally given up after a whole year of clinging on.

I don’t want to move to Delaware after all. At least not yet.

This whole year of owning two houses, I’ve been completely intrigued and engaged with our lifestyle there. When we go to the beach, we tend to live more simply. We need less stuff in our house, we eat better, we’re more active. We are even able to spend more time on our hobbies and projects - basically better all around.

The JAMStack is PRPL at Build Time

Sat, 27 Oct 2018 07:58:31 +0000

Two interesting web-related things happened this week. First, I finally started reworking 12inchesbehind.com into a personal gallery for myself. It’s still a complete wreck, but in the interest of following the “release while embarrassed” paradigm, I loaded it onto Netlify, fixed up DNS, and put it out there.

The other thing that happened is that this blog went down briefly. At first I thought it was the hosting (surge.sh), but they’re actually great hosting as always and it was my mistake on the DNS side. Anyway, all the other small sites I host are on Netlify so I took the opportunity to move this over also.

The Personal MBA

Fri, 26 Oct 2018 20:25:31 +0000

You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library. Good Will Hunting

I recently finished reading The Personal MBA. I say “finished”, but it’s not really a book you read front-to-back and then put away. It has already been revisited, reread, and dogeared quite a few times. The Personal MBA is a reference book; the kind you come back to over and over for sage advice in specific situations.

Crap, We are the Joneses

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 08:32:46 +0000

On the drive down to the beach for Columbus Day weekend, my wife and I were chatting about the beach house and how great this first year has been (October 6th was one year!). We’ve been really delighted with how much our family and friends have enjoyed coming here as well, and we talked about that too. Along with that, it’s been interesting sometimes to notice other people’s reactions when we mention the beach house, especially beyond our close friends and family. Here’s how that often goes:

Principal Payments

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 06:58:30 +0000

Today is my wife’s birthday! Since it’s her birthday, I want to talk about a topic where she’s been right and I’ve been stubbornly ignorant for too long.

Principal Payments.

Since forever ago, I’ve always just assumed that a mortgage is something you have to deal with. It’s a recurring payment and you do it each month and that’s that. A normal 30 year term is long enough to seem so far in the future that it doesn’t really matter to you right now. It’s a problem you can push off to your future self.

Nuclear Efficiency and The Wins In Front of Our Faces

Sat, 08 Sep 2018 13:11:58 +0000

Big Ships

A couple of weeks ago, I was headed over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to Delaware with a large container ship about to head out under the bridge to the ocean. It was a medium-sized ship with very recognizable script, so me being me, I looked it up. It looked like this:

Here’s what I found - it’s a 150m long vessel that carries cars all over the world, and Hoegh has over 50 of them this size or larger. Altogether, the fleet carries over 2 million cars per year and won “Best Shipping Line of the Year” in 2018.

The Best Test

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 19:33:31 +0000

People love lists and litanies of superlative adjectives. The best. The most. The funniest. The smartest. The cheapest. The strongest. The fastest. Some of these can’t be measured. Best is a fun metric, but it has no good unit of measurement. But while some can’t be measured, others can be measured in lots of different ways. Which is the cheapest car to own? The cheapest to buy? The cheapest to maintain? The one that takes the least amount of gas?

What Does Your Place Whisper?

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 22:10:30 +0000

Two random silly things happened today that made me think yet again about the idea of place.

First, I listened to a Tropical MBA podcast episode (that’s right) that asked “What Does Your City Whisper?” They referenced one of my favorite old Paul Graham articles about the same topic. It’s a quick read you should go tackle, but the basic gist is that our environment matters and that different places subtly tell you different things about yourself. Paul Graham says that New York says to people “You should make more money” and that Cambridge (Boston) says “You should be smarter”.

The Ultimate Luxury

Sun, 19 Aug 2018 14:10:30 +0000

I’ve been here for a full ten days now on a wonderful August vacation. We haven’t had a schedule or a planned event the whole time really. We’ve had a few things we definitely wanted to do - like take our kids to the rides one day - and we did that, but there was no plan. It just happened.

The other interesting thing, aside from a lack of schedule, is how full the time has felt. Both Maureen and I have been biking and running almost every day. There’s been kayak rides, grill nights and extended family parties, house projects, hikes, kid bike rides without training wheels (finally), and plenty of beach time. I also managed to prototype a simple website, design and construct my first furniture project (a slab walnut desk with a live edge), and do some writing.

This Isn't Vacation Living

Tue, 14 Aug 2018 12:41:30 +0000

I’m on “vacation” this week, which is to say that I’m not at work. I’m still doing some work here and there, but not much, and my days have been filled with laughing children, grilled burgers, bike rides, and cocktails. It’s been a beautiful week, but it’s not really vacation.

It’s better.

A lot of people seem to separate their lives into work, weekends, and vacation. And when vacations come, it’s time to spend $6,000 on flights and a hotel just to lay around all day doing nothing and drinking froufrou drinks. Obviously I’m exaggerating a bit, but when you think about it, vacation are kind of a weird thing. People really do spend $6k pretty easily on a week away. Add in kids and the aggravation and headaches of the roundtrip traveling will be exhausting enough for people to say they need a vacation from their vacation!

Urgent and Important

Sun, 05 Aug 2018 07:33:31 +0000

What should you do right now? Obviously the thing that has to get done right now. But how do you know what that is.. and then what?

I found this chart a little while back and immediately learned a ton about how I do things wrong.

I had never distinguished the ideas of urgent and important. They were jumbled up together in a tangled web of stress, but we can split them out fairly easily. Urgency has a sense of time while importance has a sense of value.

Leaf Nodes

Sat, 04 Aug 2018 09:56:31 +0000

When most people think of organizational structures, they usually think about trees. Workers who work all day generally sit at the “bottom”, and managers and other people that kinda do work and that you “report to” sit somewhere in the middle. Meanwhile, there’s a top tier where seemingly no work gets done.

Of course, that’s not true. But what is true is that the type of work you do changes drastically the higher up a tree you go. The leaf nodes at the bottom are generally focused on specific details of whatever the overall organization wants to do. Middle and upper nodes are focused on ensuring the overall vision of the organization is achieved, and that an accurate representation of overall progress is understood. This is insanely difficult work, because humans are difficult, and is usually focused around communication.

The Tribalism Answer

Mon, 30 Jul 2018 09:25:31 +0000

Aside from everything else he does or says, Jordan Peterson has gotten just one thing right, and this one thing is enough to have irritated a lot of people. A lot of people hide their dislike for Peterson behind claims of transphobia, racism, misogyny, fascism (which is especially weird), and lots more.

But at the end of the day, despite any of his more specific views that I do or don’t agree with, it’s just this one view that’s pissed so many people off.

The Two Graphs That Made Me Stop Worrying About Impostor Syndrome

Fri, 27 Jul 2018 22:15:31 +0000

Without further ado:

Add it all up and you realize that Impostor Syndrome is kind of like a reverse Dunning Kruger effect. Dunning Kruger, by definition, only really affects people below the median.

On the other hand, Impostor Syndrome is a sickness of the competent. If you suffer from it, paradoxically, you don’t really have anything to worry about.

Book Review - Conspiracy

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 07:14:14 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I finished up Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue. I’ve been thinking about it since; it’s the kind of book that leaves a mark.

First, the subject matter seems like a fabrication. The secrecy and connections behind a billionaire funding a millionaire’s lawsuit against a press organization is a pretty far-fetched tale. And yet, it happened.

In 2018, with our diametric news media, it’s probably important for more people to understand what happened between Thiel, Hogan, and Gawker. The way our media works today, ten years later, doesn’t seem all that different. The news still drives towards the most outrageous, obscene or controversial snippet to pull in ad revenue, it just has most of it’s focus on politics today. Russ Roberts calls this the Outrage Epidemic. On the level of the media and broadcast, there’s a lot to learn from the Gawker years here that we can still apply today.

A Sense of Place

Wed, 11 Jul 2018 22:10:30 +0000

It’s the middle of the week in July and I’m sitting on my porch in Maryland listening to some Coltrane. The evening is peaceful - crickets are a wonderful accompaniment to saxophone - but I can’t help but yearn for a different scene.

Never felt a sense of place like at the beach. Out in the grasses and the marshes, among pine trees and horseshoe crabs is peace.

I just spent 10 days in lower Delaware, relaxing, crabbing, kayaking, biking, and enjoying 4th of July festivities with friends. I still feel like I’m there. I still feel like I belong there.

Introverted Idea Thievery (Listening)

Sat, 02 Jun 2018 10:03:31 +0000

A friend calls me an idea thief. Not that I’m literally stealing ideas, but that I tend to ingest more than I output, especially in real-time situations like conversations. I pull all the information in and try to put it all together in my head before I ever share any output.

Being a relatively typical extrovert, my friend gets really annoyed at me when I just keep not talking during a conversation. My wife gets pretty irritated for the same reason. If we’re having any kind of argument, I stop talking because I’m trying to think it out. Note to introverts: don’t do that, talk to your wife.

The Most Important Skill You'll Ever Teach Your Kids

Sun, 20 May 2018 10:47:31 +0000

My kids right now are 6, 3, and 1. They are completely amazing and I adore them. I can’t wait to see where things go from here.

I also know that parenting is simultaneously both the most terrifying and the most gratifying human undertaking. One of the underrated reasons it’s utterly terrifying is because it’s sometimes so hard to put into practice the vision you have of being a good parent for your kids.

The Captain of The Ship

Sun, 06 May 2018 10:25:31 +0000

Spend time leading any kind of team of skilled workers and you’ll quickly find yourself in a position of significant and unintuitive anxiety.

It seems like everyone is better than you.

If it’s a good team that you’re privileged to be on, you’re probably right. No matter how good you are, everyone really is better than you. There’s a good reason for this. If you’re working together to accomplish a complex task, like building a piece of software, everyone on your team needs to go deep into some area of the task and understand it fully. Everyone except the leader; the leader’s job is to go broad and understand the scope of the entire task and make sure everything is going to work in sync.

Math for Theologians

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 07:50:31 +0000

Caveat lector:

This is an opinionated piece around topics that have a shared surface area of controversy. The endless and unendable debate around science (often as a proxy for rationality or humanism) and religion seems to rankle almost all that consider the subject. The below may induce this rankle on both sides. It calls out math as not only the language of science but as it’s primary form. It also implicitly dismisses any high ground that some may give science and math, and makes them vulnerable to the same scales of beauty, wonder and emotion that religion fosters. On the other hand, it generalizes the word theologian to mean anyone interested in concepts of religion or evangelization. And it suggests (again, implicitly) that most people engaged in that practice - including pastors, peers, and priests - are, at best, struggling against the monumental size of the task and, at worst, are willfully ignorant and doing a substandard job of it, usually by acting as if it’s 1618, not 2018.

Pro-Imagination not Anti-Technology

Sat, 31 Mar 2018 21:34:31 +0000

I had a cigar recently with one of my best friends, who is a teacher at a local private boys school. We live in a fairly affluent area near DC, so the schools are pretty ritzy and all want the best and fanciest technology. He was lamenting the funding drive at his daughter’s school, where they’re pushing for iPads for all students in the classroom. He wanted to know why and what they’d be used for. I do too.

Why It's Insane To Consider Snow When Buying A Car Below The Mason-Dixon Line

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 15:25:31 +0000

So here’s the thing: I’m a car guy and I’ve bought about 25 cars in my life. This means I talk to a lot of people about buying cars. People often say they want my opinion about their choices. I’ve noticed that often what they really want is to talk at someone they think knows a lot so they feel more secure about their decision. This is fine; we all do it sometimes. Talking to an “expert” makes people feel better about their decision. It’s just that they usually don’t do much listening, which is the key thing to do when talking to an expert. Something to keep in mind.

Hello Trello

Tue, 27 Feb 2018 08:15:31 +0000

I’ve been on a roll lately. For once, some of my grand aspirations have started a slow transfer into reality. This is the 14th post of 2018 and I’m also doing more of my pet personal projects. It’s a good feeling. I think there’s three reasons why things have picked up, and I’m recording them here for my future self and others (cough Matt).

Trello

Like everyone else, I’m enamored with the newest, latest tools for tasks and todo lists. I’ve tried a lot of them, which has made me have a bunch of different todo lists in disparate places. A little while back I nixed them all and centralized around Trello. More specifically, I only have one Trello board and everything goes on there, whether it’s work, play, ideas, checklists, whatever.

Photos Are Better Than Video

Sun, 25 Feb 2018 11:02:31 +0000

At this point in our history, the technology and ability to take pictures and record video is completely ubiquitous. We can - and do - record anywhere at any time.

More and more, people are recording video. Live streaming on Instagram is getting pretty commonplace. It seems like most weddings have a videographer and a photographer. Parents record every new thing their kids do. And, my favorite, people record a concert on their phone from the audience.

Being Wrong for Leaders

Sat, 24 Feb 2018 08:52:31 +0000

I love being wrong. It’s one of the best things to be. Being wrong generally means that you’re learning, assuming you accept your wrongness and are working to get out from under it.

So to say that more precisely: being wrong is great if you’re actively trying not to be wrong. Being wrong is horrible if you’re wallowing in it.

Being wrong is even more important for leaders. When you’re a leader, it means people are listening to you. A lot of the time, people will listen to a leader even when the leader is wrong.

Golf and Baseball

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 07:25:31 +0000

I listened recently to an Econtalk episode interviewing Bill James - the guy behind sabermetrics and the statistical view of baseball. If you’ve ever seen Moneyball, you know what I’m talking about.

It reminded me of a distinction that I had heard awhile back between baseball and golf. I wish I could remember the source.

It said that most human endeavors could be considered as either golf or baseball. Golf is the kind of thing where every single shot counts, and you have to get each one right. Baseball is all about trends and averages. Nobody expects a hit on every at-bat; it doesn’t work like that.

The Mailman - Why Introverts Should Write

Sun, 18 Feb 2018 10:19:09 +0000

Spoilers! I’m talking about one of the big twists in Vernor Vinge’s True Names. If you want to read it first - and you should, it’s fantastic and only just under 50 pages - a full text is available online.

The Mailman is the main antagonist is True Names, a computer thriller set in a future where people explore computer networks and the internet through a fantastic sort of shared VR. The details are extensive so I won’t cover them all, but the main gist is that the Mailman is a super-powerful unknown entity in the world. Ery and Mr. Slippery, the two protagonists, are expert level hackers that end up working with the big, bad government to catch their shared enemy.

Asymptote Towards Truth

Sat, 17 Feb 2018 10:33:45 +0000

Awhile back, a friend pointed out an apparent conundrum in his world view. His opinions, he said, aligned to what ended up being provably correct with surprising frequency. And yet, his opinions are also always changing, sometimes quite a bit over time. How can both these things be true?

Setting aside things like confirmation bias, he was right about being right very frequently. He is, a lot. But his observation isn’t a paradox, it’s actually the causal relationship.

Gatsby Tumbld

Fri, 16 Feb 2018 21:02:31 +0000

Last weekend, I made this. It was a fun little exercise and I continue to get utility out of having this, so I thought I’d go over what it is and the process of building it.

What’s a Tumble?

Over the years, I’ve used a couple of different services as an easy way to track interesting things I’ve found on the internet. Basically a simple version of del.icio.us (if you remember that) but recorded over time and without categories. One of the things I really like about this is that I can go back over time and see a history of the things I was reading or thinking about. I love looking through it occasionally and going “oh yeah..”. I also love being able to go back and quickly lookup things from a week or a month ago that would otherwise be lost to me. It seems like a simple thing, but it’s gotten a lot of use.

Wanna look good? Focus on Surface Area

Mon, 12 Feb 2018 07:15:46 +0000

The last 15 months or so have been a winding path towards a healthier and better lifestyle. It’s a longterm process, and nowhere near done, but already I’m way lighter, stronger, faster, and feel better.

And, inevitably, I kinda look better too.

Here’s the thing. Realizing you’re not as good as you can be requires honesty. And when you start looking honestly, you ask yourself:

How is it that so much of what we tell ourselves and others is simply excuses in disguise?

On the Dangers of Potential Energy

Wed, 07 Feb 2018 21:31:46 +0000

My last goal of 2018 was to focus on doing, and to revive the joy of doing, without regard for the outcome. I’ve been trying to understand for myself exactly what this means. It’s been a struggle to formulate the idea properly - it’s kind of complex - but I think I have a metaphor for it that fits.

That metaphor is the difference between potential and kinetic energy. Potential energy can be dangerous, while kinetic energy is generally fruitful. I want to focus on kinetic energy.

Two Weeks, Over Ten Pounds

Wed, 24 Jan 2018 07:31:46 +0000

It’s been just over two weeks since I hopped back on the keto bandwagon, and I’m both frustrated and excited.

Keto is the best way I’ve found to make a big dent into body fat and body composition. Each time I’ve done it, I’ve somehow been both excited by how fast it works while being frustrated by the slowness.

On the day-to-day level, it seems so slow. I do weigh-ins twice a week now, and it can be frustrating to sometimes see no change or only a pound difference. I used to do daily weigh-ins as a way to focus and maintain accountability. Once I proved to myself that I could do it, I dropped it back because the daily cognitive stress of “the number” was annoying. Twice a week is a good balance.

Mulatsag

Sat, 20 Jan 2018 07:31:46 +0000

I’ve just come across the most fantastic word, and I have a thing for words.

The word is mulatsag, which I have no idea how to pronounce. Given that it’s Hungarian - considered one of the hardest languages in the world to learn - I’m not going to try. But I love the contextual definition I found.

I’ve been reading Turing’s Cathedral, a wonderful history of computing in the 20th Century. One of the main characters in this tale is Johnny von Neumann, who is rapidly becoming one of my personal heroes. Anyway, Klari von Neumann, his wife, describes some of their big family occasions in Budapest:

Car Washes and Girl Scout Cookies

Mon, 15 Jan 2018 09:18:19 +0000

I’m going to talk about some traditions we have with our kids in a rather stern way, so if you’re easily offended, feel free to leave now.

Giving Kids Direction

Fundraising car washes suck. Girl Scout Cookies suck too, but for different reasons.

These and similar activities are pretty common these days, and are often considered “service activities” for kids. They are considered a means for children to learn how to do some good in the world or to take some ownership over a task. Sound right?

Alright 2018, What You Got?

Sat, 06 Jan 2018 09:20:40 +0000

I already went over it, but 2017 was a banner year. A lot changed too. My wife and I joke a bit about the popular kids from high school that, it turns out, peaked in high school. Both of us think we haven’t peaked yet. Hopefully 2018 is another step up!

210

Let’s start out concrete. I’ve got a number in mind and it’s 210 lbs. I haven’t been that weight since sometime in early college and I want to see and feel what it’s like.

2017 Review

Thu, 04 Jan 2018 14:20:40 +0000

This has been an interesting year. Filled with way more ups and downs than I expected. After what has happened and what I’ve learned, I’m really excited for 2018. But before I get there, we need to go over this year first.

My original focus list for the year was:

Powerlifting
Duathlon
Work/life balance
Just One Thing
Sell Some Prints

So how’d I do? Pretty good overall, but there were definitely a few changes in focus over time.

The Kid Rules

Sat, 25 Nov 2017 13:02:12 +0000

There’s no question about it, we’re in love with this place. It’s Thanksgiving weekend and we’re hanging out in Maryland with lots of family, which is great. But it’s hard not to yearn for views like these..

But there’s another side to this view that’s worth talking about. We live on the water with kids that are 5, 3, and almost 1 year old. They’ll grow up around water here and at the beach, and they’ll learn to swim like fish. Maureen’s cousin Scott was a BB lifeguard, and at 3 Eric already thinks this is super cool. But in the meantime, a canal with a swift current and no fence calls for some caution.

Pushing Too Hard

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 16:12:46 +0000

We’re back in Maryland getting prepared for Thanksgiving this week. Since we’re hosting 20+ people at our house, there’s a ton to do! Unfortunately, the entire family is slowly recovering from some head colds and aches and everyone feels pretty exhausted. Thanksgiving will be great as always, but this week is a bit trickier than usual. And for the most part, I think we did it to ourselves.

We were down at the beach this past weekend, but we had skipped a trip the week before for the first time since we bought the place. We expected it to be a normal weekend, and it was.. except that our laundry list of stuff-to-do was a bit longer. And then we added to it. And added to it.

The Wire and Illiquidity

Wed, 08 Nov 2017 14:04:46 +0000

I mentioned before that the painful day in buying the beach house was actually the day before closing. That was the day I got to wire over a hundred thousand dollars into the escrow account for closing.

This was the third house I’ve bought (2nd for Maureen), and each time the amount of money we put down increased. On my first house, before the 2008 bubble, I put a big fat zero down. Amateur. For the second house, in 2012, it was about 40k. This time, it was quite a bit more.

Weekend Schedule

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 08:32:46 +0000

We’re now four weekends into this little adventure, and I think we’re starting to get the schedule down. Here’s what it looks like:

Pack up on Thursday night
Addy gets out of school on Friday at 3pm. Pick her up and GO
Arrive around 6pm Friday
Enjoy the weekend
Early dinner Sunday around 4 or 5pm
Kids in their pajamas
Leave around 5p, home at 7-730p, hopefully the kids are asleep

We’ve been trying to vary this slightly to figure out what works best. I vastly prefer to leave straight from work, as it’s just over 2 hours flat and I avoid a lot of traffic (and the drive home). Maureen vastly prefers that I come home because otherwise she has to drive all three kids down herself (which I totally get by the way!)

That First Lunch

Sat, 04 Nov 2017 08:32:46 +0000

It’s a beautiful Saturday morning at the beach on the first weekend in November. Daylight savings time starts tomorrow, so the sun isn’t up quite yet. I’ve got a cup of tea, Eric is still asleep, and the girls are playing.

In other words, it’s a great time to sit down and write. Just the kind of thing the beach is perfect for.

A lot has happened in the month since we officially bought this place. Before we get into what we’ve been doing, I wanted to focus on that first day, and the first feelings we had of owning this place.

All My Big Purchases Are Done

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 08:32:46 +0000

Now that the bare bones of this little site are setup, it’s time to focus on some writing. Maureen and I are about three weeks into two-house ownership at this point. I plan to go back and recap the first couple of frenetic weekends as well, but I wanted to kick this off by talking about one of the more interesting realizations I’ve had through this process.

A second house at the beach has been a dream of ours for years now, and the house that is now a reality is a third-generation home at the shore; both my wife’s grandfather and her parents also have houses there.

Your 30s - The Most Important Decade

Sun, 08 Oct 2017 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve just recently turned 37. A younger version of me once thought this was hideously old, but now that I’m here I still feel young, excited about everything, and ready for some of the best parts of my life that are ahead of me. On the other hand, very slowly during your 30s, the hand of father time starts to bend your back ever so slightly. Not so much that you’re actually limited in any way, but just enough that you shake your head every once in awhile wondering what that weird feeling is.

Three Girls

Fri, 21 Jul 2017 20:32:46 +0000

Some people seem to think I do a lot of different things and that I push pretty hard when I do them. I’m not very gradual; once I’m into something, I’m really into it. My wife likes to laugh at my T-shirt drawer because she says you can trace the evolution of my hobbies over time based on T-shirts. The older shirts are all about car racing. These days the newer shirts are all about powerlifting.

Bacon as a Health Food.

Thu, 15 Jun 2017 01:39:14 +0000

So recently.. this happened:

And through this process, I’ve learned I have a lot to say. And even more strangely, people sometimes listen¹. So I’ve decided to consolidate the advice that I’ve given in one semi-long diatribe about health, food, and our bodies.

Titles

I had a lot of titles for this post. Just to be fun, here’s some:

The Only Two Things That Matter For Losing Weight
Lose Weight On One Week of Willpower
Lose Weight Eating Foods You Love
Eat Less, Move More

The Value of Being Sore

And a bunch of others. Most seemed shitty and generic. In other words, they sounded a lot like the kind of crap the fitness industry puts out on a daily basis. You know, the multi-billion dollar industry that consistently claims to have the secret 7-minute answer to all of your problems.

Evergreen News

Sun, 14 May 2017 10:17:30 +0000

I’m working right now to setup another blog, get a mailing list going, and build an audience. I’ve never actually tried to build an audience before - this blog is for me and my thoughts and any additional reading by others is incidental - so being me, I’ve been putting in some research into how this actually works.

One of the big concepts I ran across quickly was the notion of evergreen content. Evergreen content always stays fresh, regardless of when a reader finds it. It’s not poignant because of the date, it’s poignant because of the topic.

Words

Sat, 13 May 2017 16:38:34 +0000

Language

Philology is an underrated study. Tolkien was a diehard - that alone should tell you something. He invented something over 20 languages in his lifetime. I’ve always been horrible with foreign languages, which is perhaps amusing given that I write code for a living. Code is something different though, more a grammar and a syntax than actual language. But it has the same abilities in articulating dense thought.

Anyway, I’ve been keeping a list for several years of words I come across while reading that are interesting. Many I’d never heard before. Some just sound interesting, or in some other way provide a revelatory glance into their meaning without just simply looking up the definition. I began jotting them down as a reference, so here they are..

Two Signs You Might Be A Bad Driver

Sun, 12 Mar 2017 20:17:51 +0000

There’s a lot of bad drivers out there. Most of them don’t know it. It’s really hard to measure something like that. Heck, there’s a lot of obese people that somehow don’t know it too, and that’s easy to measure.

In an effort to quantify what it means to be a bad driver, I’ve provided what I believe to be two clear symptoms. These are highly generalized insofar as most specific cases of bad driving dilute down to these.

Steve.. Jobs?

Mon, 02 Jan 2017 17:39:03 +0000

Within the last year, I’ve been compared to Steve Jobs four times, twice directly and twice by proxy. The first time I laughed, the second time I scoffed. The third I listened and finally, I’ve paused to figure out what the heck they meant.

After more thought, I’m still a bit overwhelmed by the analogue. All four of the folks who said this are smarter, better, and more complete engineers than I am.

Welcome to 2017

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 03:20:40 +0000

Well, shit.

All of a sudden it’s 2017. Not sure how that happened, but it’s been an eventful and busy year. We added a porch to our house, I’m much deeper into photography than I expected to be, and, most importantly, we’ve happily added our third child to our family. Our house has a constant din of running feet, cries, and laughter. It’s wonderful.

It also means that life continues to change and my personal goals change with it. Gone are the hours straight of solitary thinking I used to think were cheap. Everything at home is now shrink wrapped into neat little packages of 15 minutes or less. If I’m going to do anything of substance, it’s going to be away.

Some Haiku

Sat, 15 Oct 2016 21:15:37 +0000

Haven’t been writing a ton, but I have accumulated some haiku over the last couple years. I figured I would put them all in one place, so here they are.

Patience

Articulation
is a precise art, and so
I fear my great thoughts.

Awareness

I conform, and they
see it as maturity.
But I know better.

Death

Knowing that the end
Is not the end of all things
Allows one to live.

Freaking Out.

Tue, 05 Jul 2016 18:22:11 +0000

So I’m freaking out. Like totally. Just because I read something.

What could I have read you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. I started reading my old manuscript from NaNoWriMo that has sat untouched and dusty for seven or eight years. It was frightening.

And somewhat intoxicating.

You see, the really scary thing about it was that, amongst the detritus of ideas scattered around, there was some decent writing. It turns out I was not the terrible dolt that I felt like during that one month of furious typing. I was still a dolt, just not a terrible one.

Proprioception

Fri, 06 Mar 2015 16:06:25 +0000

Most people think of our interaction with the world through the traditional five senses: vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch. But there are quite a few others to control or sense things like balance and temperature.

The most interesting to me is proprioception. Proprioception is the (usually very subtle) sense of the orientation of your own body in it’s environment and the effort and strengths required to accomplish certain movements. A strong sense of proprioception becomes a great advantage in most sports and, I believe, it’s the mostly unknown quality that imparts grace to the motion of dancers, gymnasts and the like.

Weather Needs An API

Sat, 31 Jan 2015 14:14:05 +0000

Weather really needs an API.

I’ve been thinking about this since I played around with OMGEarthquake awhile back. I had originally wanted to make a few additional OMGs for tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. The problem was data.. I couldn’t find any good sources.

To make OMGEarthquake work, I had to hit up USGS for a weirdly-formatted CSV .txt file and parse through it line by line. Not exactly a modern standard. They updated it sometime in 2013 and now use an Atom feed format along with a couple of other options.

The Year's Goals

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 21:59:21 +0000

We’re a week into 2015 and I need to write down my goals for the year. I’m hoping this will be a tradition every year, since writing things down makes them more real. So without further ado..

10K: 55:00

I’ve never officially done a 10K. I’m planning on the first one being in late April, and my goal is 55 minutes or under. I did a few 5Ks this year and got down in the 24:xx minute range, and I think I can get my form back to that point relatively quickly. Doubling the distance will be a new variable, so double 27:30s seems like a good starting point. I’d love to do another a bit further on in the year and make that first number a 4, but a sub 50:00 10K seems like a big stretch right now.

Things They Don't Teach You In School

Wed, 10 Sep 2014 01:31:28 +0000

This is the transcript of a talk I gave at Howard Community College to Intro to Engineering students, September 2014

Hi everyone.

My name is Greg and I’m Vice President and Software Engineer at a small company. I went to University of Maryland with Mark [Edelen] and got my degree in Computer Engineering in 2002, so I’ve been out of school for about 12 years.

Instead of talking about any specific experiences in my engineering life, I wanted to talk instead about some of the things that I’ve found to be not just important after school, but surprisingly important. In other words, I want to talk about a few things that Engineering School doesn’t always teach you.

Career Goals

Sun, 29 Jun 2014 20:33:08 +0000

When I got out of college, I set my first career goal. I think everyone does this at some point - it’s a natural and almost expected thing to do. Everyone uses the same barometers too, and mine was no different. My first career goal was to make $100,000 a year in salary.

This sounded very lofty to a new college grad. It was a lot of money, and I assumed the prestige/fame/expertise/whatever that accompanied it would be concomitant. I gave myself until 30 to scale this mountain.

Three Kinds of Wine

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 03:00:00 +0000

A bunch of my friends think of me as a wine snob. I can understand that to some extent, I like good wine. But a snob I am not, at least not in the way my friends think I am.

Some History

Wine has a long history that has changed drastically in the 20th century, and it all started with an insect. At the end of the 19th century, phyloxxera ravaged most vineyards around the world, and almost all wines had to graft new plants that could deal with phyloxxera. Some people believe that pre-phyloxxera wines had a different, richer character. A few very small vineyards in Europe escaped phylloxera altogether, and their wines today command huge prices.

An Inspiration

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 03:00:00 +0000

It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon and I am sitting in one of my favorite spots. It’s a small side table in the sunroom of a small red house a block from the beach. This is one of the places I can really think, with very few interruptions and very few distractions.

My wife’s family has come to this small family beach town for decades. I’ve only been coming for four years, but it has become one of the cornerstones of my life. By late morning, all the girls are headed up to the beach to sit, tan, swim, and relax. The boys scatter - either to putter around the house or fish or workout. For me, my goal is to end up right here.

The (Re-)Privatization of Big Dreams

Mon, 27 May 2013 03:00:00 +0000

The 20th Century had some really big ideas, not all good. Genetics. Nuclear Power. Computers. Nuclear Weapons. Socialism. Fascism. Nazism. Keynesian Economics. The Internet. Relativity. Space Exploration. Quantum Mechanics. The Automobile. Suburbia. Widespread college education. Many others. That’s a lot of ideas.

One of the most remarkable characteristics of the 20th century is that many of these big ideas were all State Sponsored. All of the failed social experiments in Europe were, by their nature, performed on the level of large governments, and America’s adventures in suburbia with the automobile came directly from the creation of the highway system, along with other government advocates like Robert Moses. US colleges grew popular out of the Morrill land-grant acts of the late 19th century. The more scientific experiments of the 20th century seem to fall into two groups: theoretical and experimental. The theoretical ideas, like relativity and quantum mechanics, required relatively little in resources (beyond an abundance of genius). On the other hand, space exploration, nuclear science, the computer and the Internet all required direct funding from big governments.

Two Kinds of FOSS

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 03:00:00 +0000

About a month ago, I went to 10Gen’s MongoDC Conference. It was a nice little day long conference; the speakers were highly technical and included the 10Gen CEO and COO. I hung out with a few friends and learned some new things about what Mongo can do, and what it will do in upcoming releases.

I was also reminded that there are two kinds of FOSS. FOSS has become a sort of watchword for business-types. They hear the Free part and smile, and they willingly interpret the Open Source part to mean community driven and low risk.

2 Month Check-In

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Last Wednesday was two months from my starting point, where I weighed 258. The last couple weeks, I’ve been hovering around 244. So I’m down 14 lbs. Not bad, but not quite where I expected to be. Here’s my graphs.

So what’s happened? Basically, I got to a point where I started caring more about my workout weights than I did my weight. I could still stand to lose a few more, but I have a plan..

The Incredible Shrinking Man

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:00:00 +0000

I had planned this to be a two week checkpoint.. I think at this point I’m just over three weeks.

Progress so far has been good. It hasn’t been quite as strong as the first two weeks I did this in August, but that’s to be expected considering the workouts I’ve been doing. Here’s the graph so far:

I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that I was at a high of 258. That’s a lot. I’m now at 247 and going down steadily. My belt is down a notch. Based on current progress, I should be passing 240 no later than mid-February. 230 will likely be the second week of March.

It begins, now.

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 05:00:00 +0000

I’m starting a new workout and diet regimen tomorrow. In the interest of disclosure and drive, I’m tracking my goals and progress here.

First, a bit about where I am and where I’ve been. I’m 32. My height is 6'1 and my weight is slightly over 250 (I’m not sure of the exact number, I’ll find that out tomorrow morning). I’ve always been pretty athletic, and for the last ten years or so my weight has been almost exactly 240. That’s a lot, I know. I’m a pretty big guy naturally (or as a friend put it, with a positive spin, I’m built like a brick shithouse). I’ve never put much emphasis on anything but being strong, so as long as I could run a couple of miles in a decent time, that was enough.

Voting With Your Pocketbook?

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 04:00:00 +0000

Everyone seems to have this idea that Republican policy favors the rich while Democratic policy favors the poor. Additionally, everyone assumes the rich support Republican policies, while the poor support Democratic policies. I decided to see if a bit of data would support this in the voting record. Here’s what I came up with:

The richer states tend to align more with the Democratic party while the poorer states tend to align with the Republican party. This is especially true for Presidential elections, and a little less true for Governors and State Legislatures. If people really vote with their pocketbooks, why would rich states vote for a party that is perceived to want to raise taxes? And why would poor states vote for a party that is perceived to want to take more from the middle class, cut taxes for the rich, and kill entitlements for the poor?

We Need More Scientist Saints

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 03:00:00 +0000

A Simple Life

Christopher Hitchens died recently. Much could be said of his life, but the quality that seems strongest is his biting honestly. He was brutally, scathingly honest in voicing his opinion, and his honesty broke only when he trended towards sensationalism.

Hitchens wrote with such opinionated honesty in a stunningly negative obituary of Mother Teresa in 2003. It would be memorable for no other reason than its unusual negativity towards a woman endeared to so many. But I remember it for one peculiar phrase Hitchens used. He said, “Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty.”

Corbusier Fucked It All Up

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 04:00:00 +0000

Forgive me for being a bit brash, but if I were to make the title more palatable it wouldn’t convey the same meaning. Le Corbusier really did fuck it all up.

Who is this guy, you might ask? Aside from architects and students who have taken architecture classes, few seem to recognize his name. Le Corbusier, a pseudonym he gave himself, was an early twentieth century architect obsessed with engineering as architecture, concrete, steel, height, cubism, and urban planning.

Speed Traps Are Dangerous

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 04:00:00 +0000

I want to talk about something we all think we know. Speed traps, especially the unmanned stationary kind all over my home county in Maryland, are revenue generating, machine perpetuating products of bureaucracy. Unfortunately, bureaucracy is perhaps the most regenerating organism ever invented, so there is no way to ever overcome speed traps by conveying such a rational argument. The only way to actually demolish these outposts of revenue is to declare them as dangerous. I hope to show that they are, in fact, dangerous.

Constitutionalism

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000

A very curious thing has happened over the last fifty years or so. Politics has been ruined by technology and media. It started somewhat innocently with television, but as more media, more connections and more technology have come online, the information flood has ruined the idealistic American view of politics. It’s simply not possible to be a Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, or even a Roosevelt today.

When our country was first founded by imperfect men, their imperfections were ignored relatively easily. The flow of information was slow and standardized enough that these men were judged on the political ideas they choose to promulgate and debate rather than their own personal lives or actions.

Money - Bullet Points

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0000

So that’s a whirlwind tour of money and motivations. I’ve covered most of my bases, but there’s still some little tidbits and such that are either repetitive or new but wouldn’t really fit anywhere. So this is the PowerPoint part of my series. I’ve talked a bit about how to think about wealth, happiness, work, and how to step out of the normal mode of a fixed-income day job. I’d love to keep talking more about it with anyone and everyone; I know I’ve still got a lot to learn.

Money - Psychology

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Psychology

Some of the ideas I’ve presented so far are certainly different than how most people think about money, but they’re not original.

The most important thing about this entire topic is psychology. The trouble that most people have with money is not simple math, it’s how they think about it. Most people - and that certainly includes me - struggle constantly with comparisons and material desires. This is why the identification of wealth as something not exclusively material is so important. Representing wealth as time, health, work, or happiness presents an altogether different, more humble, more realistic, and more joyful perspective on money.

Money - Income, Expenses, and Value

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0000

This is where we get into the meat and potatoes. This is where things get more fun. Since money is a tool, how and why should I use it?

Maslow

To understand motivations, take a brief look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s an old, well-used model, but it still has relevance to how we should organize and structure our lives.

Maslow’s pyramid tries to characterize what is important for a person to be a person. The bottom of the pyramid are all things we largely take for granted now: food, clean water, sanitation, sleep. The pyramid builds on every step, but each is required for our happiness. When Maslow described the last step, self-actualization, he said, “What a man can be, he must be.” Nothing is more important than that. At the very least, money shouldn’t get in the way. Maybe sometimes it can help too.

Money - Wealth

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0000

In the intro to this little series on money, I laid out a bunch of very simple concepts about what money is and how it works in our system. I said all of that to say this:

Money is just a tool. Nothing more, nothing less.

The reason that everyone seems to care about money is because they actually care about something else: wealth.

Wealth can have a lot of different meanings. What it seems to represent is having enough stuff; enough material possessions. But wealth can also be represented by health, by knowledge, by time, by good work, by friends and family, and by contentment. Most people work at acquiring wealth as a means of striving for a good life. Unfortunately, this devolves into acquiring stuff. Which eventually devolves into desiring money.

Money - Intro

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Money is a funny thing. It can bring tremendous joy or pain. It can set wild expectations, deliver an emotional punch, and make us feel better or worse about ourselves than we ought to.

As I get older, I’ve found myself thinking and learning more about money. I used to not care for it or about it at all. Erasmus, I thought, had it right:

When I get a little money I buy books, and if any is left over, I buy food and clothes.

How I Use GMail

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 03:00:00 +0000

Even in 2011, email is the most ubiquitous of internet communications. Everyone uses it. It becomes the basic hub of your entire internet presence. Your subscriptions from every service hit your email. Anything you order online goes to email. Anything you register for goes to email. Bills go to email. Important FB or Twitter news goes to email. Messages from friends, family, and coworkers goes to email. Yet it still surprises me how badly most people manage their email. Most are still stuck using Outlook, or Hotmail/Comcast/Yahoo. Many use GMail, but only in a rudimentary fashion. (Interestingly, someone did a study that suggested you can guess the age of someone based on which email service they use, which I can’t find right now.)

The Importance of Crowds

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 03:00:00 +0000

Fourth of July weekend this year found me on Bethany Beach sitting on a blanket on the sand waiting for the fireworks to start. The show was great, but the crowd was ridiculous. Annoying kids flinging sand everywhere, loud and drunk men, smokers, and obnoxious mothers seemed prevalent. I usually get a little flustered in crowds, and my “bah humbug!” was definitely showing itself that day. Then I came to a new realization, and my annoyance floated away.

I'll Never Own a Ferrari

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 03:00:00 +0000

Over the weekend, my Dad went on a joy ride in a buddy’s brand new Ferrari California, a rare and exquisite moment in any car guy’s life. It’s enough to turn any grown man into a bumbling, drooling kid. It’s got perfect lines, an elegant interior and a motor to die for. My Dad was in heaven.

The Ferrari 458 Italia is the reigning champion of my own Ferrari dreams. I got to see a couple in person recently at the Baltimore Grand Prix. The sounds they make are otherworldly. Their shape is fiendish yet beautiful. They met my expectation and I was in love. I was ready to put on my linen pants, half-open polo shirt and leather moccasins and fly down the Cote d’Azur to Monaco for a night of gambling and high living.

What You'll Wish You'd Known

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 03:00:00 +0000

An Ask PG thread on Hacker News had a comment so poignant I felt inclined to repost it here. The author suggested PG make another book of essays, this one targeted at high school and college students (loosely). Here’s the OP’s list:

I would consider adding to this:

Why Robert Reich is Both Right and Wrong

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 03:00:00 +0000

I’ve seen this 2 minute economic summation from Robert Reich floating around in a bunch of different places and it has bugged me, so I’ve been trying to figure out why. Reich has clearly thought about this a lot, but my first reaction is that nobody can really explain what’s going on in 2 minutes. After watching it, I still think it’s impossible. Here’s why:

My biggest problem with his quick thinking is that most of those super rich he talks about in the last thirty years earned their money. The economy since 1980 has been a knowledge economy, and that doesn’t follow the more traditional daddy model of wealth creation. In large part, those super rich didn’t take away wealth from the average worker to get their money. They innovated and prospered, and so did the average consumer. Take a look at the Forbes 400 as an example dataset. Look where all that wealth came from - 45 alone are from Technology. You are richer now because Steve Jobs made billions on iPods. I am richer now because of Page and Brin’s search engine. They made the world better, not worse. A lot better. Why shouldn’t they prosper? Why shouldn’t the early Googler millionaires prosper? There will always be exceptions to this - I count 3 billionaires who made their money from casinos. We should be willing to accept that, given the huge upside from other wealthy folks. And even the casino owners are typically shrewd businessmen who worked for their money.

Pandering

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 03:00:00 +0000

Awhile back, I wrote about some of my frustrations with the way our political parties go back and forth across their perceived spectrums without actually saying much. The conclusion - that very rich people can and do buy political power - could be construed as conspiracy-theoretic. I think it’s more of a sad sarcasm about the difference between most of the population and the people that play politics.

But the politicians need most of the population. Literally. The notion of democracy suggests that the politicians, at least temporarily, have the ear of the majority. I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but let me rattle off some facts about the majority, as presented by some statistics about the median American (the difference between a majority and an average is significant, but is reasonable here):

Scarlet Tanagers

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 03:00:00 +0000

This morning I sat at my normal Saturday coffee shop next to a table with a mother and her teenage daughter. Though it has become a common sight, the difference between them was startling. The daughter was about what you expect from a teenage girl, relaxed and athletic, she paid attention to her hair, her clothes, and her phone, and she looked bored. Actually, she looked desperate to get out of there, to go feel the sun on her face and enjoy the day. The mother was also about what you expect. Short bad hair, fat, colored nails holding onto bad fashion along with an ugly flowery shirt and purse. She didn’t look bored, she looked boring. Middle-age had sucked the life right out of her. The dichotomy was tremendous.

Public Insurance

Tue, 03 May 2011 03:00:00 +0000

I’ve finally figured out what insurance is, aside from an elusive concept that everyone talks about and knows they need.

Ready? Here it is:

Insurance is the act of taking an inherent risk for a population and spreading the probability of that risk over the population to distribute the cost evenly.

That’s it. It’s actually pretty simple.

This means that two things matter to make it cheaper: increasing the population you spread the cost over and reducing the cost of the risk. If you can do those two things, insurance will be remarkably cheap (profit margins aside).

A Review of the Skeptical Environmentalist

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 03:00:00 +0000

For a change, I thought I’d do a book review just like my dear friend Lib. And I’ve just finished a book worthy of review.

That book is The Skeptical Environmentalist by Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg. You may have heard of Lomborg - he was brashly criticized a number of years ago for speaking against the juggernaut religion of global warming sponsored by the IPCC.

Lomborg himself is the skeptic and he does a wonderful job of explaining the State of the World. Each topic is broken down into quantifiable numbers and analyzed in turn. He maintains exhaustive notes and references, usually from IPCC or UN sponsored studies, so as to rationally counter the spiced-up language of the Litany.

Church Music

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 03:00:00 +0000

Last week I went to Mass and it was frustrating. I wanted to share why.

I went with my wife and her family to Mass in a different Diocese. There were many other frustrations with this particular Mass, most especially the tape-recorded voice of the Bishop making his Annual Appeal in place of a homily. But that’s not the main point I wanted to discuss.

The main thing is: the music was alternatively atrocious and boring.

Buying Power

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 03:00:00 +0000

During the last election, I wrote a little bit about why I didn’t vote for a candidate. Several people close to me were aghast at my decision. I still stand by it.

Three years later, Obama is president and a new Congress has been elected with a Republican majority: a recipe of change according to Republicans. The large freshman class is a sign that the American People were not happy with the previous status quo. The irony of Obama’s campaign message of change is not lost, although it at least points out the fickle, fleeting personality of the voting public.

Oeuvre

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 05:00:00 +0000

The French have a wonderful way with words. It’s a beautiful language I don’t think I’ll ever be able to learn beyond a little memorization.

Oeuvre is one of those wonderful words. It’s soft and seductive and mysterious, not unlike the concept it denotes.

Oeuvre is the total body of work of an artist or writer. I probably use the term synecdochically (another great word), but when we consider a body of work we have to consider the theme and overall feel, the context, and the genius of it.

Picasso

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 05:00:00 +0000

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

This is one of my favorite little quips, courtesy of Pablo Picasso. The reason I like it so much is the way most adults react to external influences. Most adults seem to have some sort of cognitive or social bias that I can’t name. It’s the “here we go again” syndrome. It’s a combination of raw pessimism, a bad reaction to any little thing that goes wrong, and negative reactions to every story they see on TV, especially in politics. It’s always easier to collectively call “them” idiots than it is to do anything constructive yourself.

Living Memory

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Walter Breuning is a fascinating person I’m almost sure you’ve never heard of. Walter is 114 years old. He’s the oldest living man. He lives in a nursing home in Montana. Until very recently, he still walked daily. He still wears a suit. He’s very lucid and his memory is clearly intact.

Walter’s memory, in fact, is unbelievable. He remembers his childhood well, when they had only kerosene lamps and horses were the only form of transportation. He says you used to “carry the water in, heat it on the stove. That’s what you took your bath with. Wake up in the dark. Go to bed in the dark. That’s not very pleasant.”

Why Everyone Should Write

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 05:00:00 +0000

I have several favorite answers to this question. Here’s mine:

Being able to answer questions reasonably is a sign of cleverness.

Being able to ask the right questions is a sign of wisdom.

Writing forces one to think about the right questions so that maybe occasionally cleverness can transform into wisdom.

The Optimist's Dilemma

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Everybody’s heard the old idiom “Is the glass half full or half empty?” Probably too many times. I’m sick of it.

The problem is that pessimism is so much more acceptable. That’s where the news gets off on their reporting. “The bad stuff is easier to believe.”

Optimists, on the other hand, are perceived to have rose-colored glasses. The half full/half empty analogy splits the world into equal groups. Optimists spin positively and pessimists spin negatively (or realistically, some might say).

Statelessness

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0000

I have, at the same time, both a wonderful and an abysmal memory. I cannot remember many conversations with friends; to their frustration I tell them the same things over and over sometimes. But I can remember numbers, algorithms, or “relevant” facts with ease. (For a definition of relevant, see Rands’ The Nerd Handbook and the annoyingly efficient relevancy engine.) This odd property, and the growing complexity of my life has forced me to trend towards a certain kind of operating procedure that I’ve started to call statelessness.

Going Forward, Why Apple?

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0000

The other day I saw a Sprint 4G commercial, and it crystallized why I have and will continue to choose Apple products for the foreseeable future. I’ve known that I would continue in this direction, but its been hard to articulate why (which is frustrating when people ask me).

The commercial emphasized the speed of their new 4G network, saying that it’s “Ten times faster than existing 3G networks”. There are a bunch of things wrong with this statement. First, 4G is used here strictly as marketing. There is a 4G wireless standard, and as of this date none of the networks out there come anywhere near it. Second, wireless networks have to cover large land areas and signal strength and capacity vary wildly, so such a blanket statement is impossible to uphold. These are the obvious problems and I wouldn’t even consider anything on Sprint because of them. But there’s something else packed into that one little sentence..

Remarks from a Newlywed

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0000

About a month ago, I got married. It was the best day of my life.

Before the wedding I got into a habit of occasionally watching Bridezillas. Yes, I admit it. I’d heard of it before and my curiosity got the best of me while flipping channels. That show is brilliant marketing– once it’s on, you can’t turn away from it. It’s like watching a car crash, you want badly to not see it, but you just can’t turn away.

Discuss Disqus

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 03:00:00 +0000

Is it just me, or is Disqus a very big deal? I don’t hear too much talk about them, but they seem to me to be on the edge of very big things.

Consider:

Disqus has very solid metrics across many sites on commenters, including: number of comments, length, number of replies, popularity measures, and interests.
Disqus maintains storage of all the comments. They’ve got a vast graph of internet conversations that can be PageRanked and manipulated just like Google does webpages.
All of these comments are easily parsed to show who posts links to what in comparison to what they are commenting on. The links can also be PageRanked, etc.
A set of articulate comments can themselves become part of someone’s blog or online presence. Disqus could join forces with Posterous, or someone else, to present these together.
As soon as a couple of big old-world media sites get ahold of Disqus for comments it will blow up. Imagine the ability to link a commenter from any old blog to a major article in the New York Times. Or even better, linking comments from Coding Horror, the New York Times, Roger Ebert, The Guardian, and Mark Cuban.
As more and more places use them for comments, they are essentially creating the largest internet community, bigger than any forum, woven throughout all sorts of websites.

That seems to have the potential for brilliance.

Against the Grain

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 03:00:00 +0000

There is something fundamentally human about being contrary. Lemmings. Sheep. The Roman Mob. The “unwashed sea of humanity”. These aren’t exactly inspiring phrases. Instead, we look affectionately at the road less travelled, whether we take it or not. There’s some solid logic behind being contrarian.

The Roman Mob is the first real example of dangerous groupthink. The rulers of Rome worked hard to keep them contentedly fat and distracted, lest they render their rule irrelevant. They managed to do that on and off for a long time.

Git - The Next Filesystem

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 03:00:00 +0000

Not too long ago, Google released their cloud storage service called Google Storage. GS includes a REST API and looks remarkably similar to Amazon S3. In fact, one of the options is to use the same S3 syntax to access GS.

While principal use is designed to be developers, this presents several questions. What sort of file system are we moving towards? What’s the difference between storing files locally and in the cloud? How will the interface differ? What place will REST have? How will access, updates, and changes work across multiple devices?

My Evented Life - Why Asynchronous I/O Does Not Work Everyday

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 03:00:00 +0000

Recently, I (re)read two articles that made clear to me the misappropriation of time in most people’s lives. The first was Paul Graham’s “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule”. The second was Alex Payne’s rundown of his life as a series of queues.

Most people, including me, tend to operate their lives based on events, where we can define an event as any outside stimuli requiring a response. Want some callback examples?

For a wakeup alarm:

The Long View on Fossil Fuels

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 03:00:00 +0000

A couple of months ago I ran across this article focused around a particularly interesting graph:

And the faux harrowing subtext:

Look at this graph and be afraid. It does not come from Earth First. It does not come from the Sierra Club. It was not drawn by Socialists or Nazis or Osama Bin Laden or anyone from Goldman-Sachs. If you are a Republican Tea-Partier, rest assured it does not come from a progressive Democrat. And vice versa. It was drawn by the United States Department of Energy, and the United States military’s Joint Forces Command concurs with the overall picture.

Apple Computers, Microsoft Keyboards (Keyboardists, Mousers, and Tapists)

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 03:00:00 +0000

I bought an iPad. It’s an experiment in trying to be more mobile. My goal is to find out if it can replace my laptop. I have my doubts so far, but it’s worth a shot. My main concern has been input.

Desks

I’m writing this on my iMac. I love the iMac. It’s a giant floating screen filled with awesome. The utility of Unix is there, lurking just beneath the surface, but in general the “computer” part of things has been abstracted away leaving only a gorgeous screen filled with pixels, speakers, a wireless keyboard and a tiny wireless mouse.

Reflectivity

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 03:00:00 +0000

My friend Chris is a great reflector. I bounce shit off him all the time: questions, ideas of some sort or other, both work-related and not. He’s the perfect person to do this with.

When light hits a surface, the surface absorbs all of the wavelengths you don’t see. So if something is blue, you’re literally only seeing blue light reflected back from it.

People can act the same way. When I bounce all my random crap off of Chris, he reflects only the stuff that’s interesting. If I spout off about some idea that’s completely worthless, I’ll know pretty quickly from his silence. If I hit a nerve, he’ll be racing off into the conversation - or typing faster than I can keep up on IM. It’s like a bandpass filter for interesting.

Knowing How to Not Know

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 03:00:00 +0000

What We Want To Know

What we want to know, I think, is everything. We humans have a passionate and innate desire to understand the world around us. We seek to know whatever we can find out, and if we can’t or don’t think we can find out, we make up patterns. Humans are amazing pattern seekers even when none exist.

If something is innate it means we are born with it. Children seem to prove this. The natural curiosity a child has as they learn language and begin to understand how the world around them works is self evident. Adults are drawn to children’s curiosity, almost mesmerized. We wish we could carry out the same interests with the same passion.

Some Predictions

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0000

All sorts of people do predictions. I’ve never tried to think ahead so concretely, so it seemed worth a try. These are in no particular order.

No More Wires

ETA: 5 years

That’s right, no more wires. Wireless power is right around the corner. Right now, I’ve got my iMac and my MBP sitting on my office desk. Both have only a power cord. Soon, they’ll both have nothing. Every other electronic device in the home will have nothing. If you want to use older stuff, you’ll buy a product that will wrap the cord up tight and provide an adapter to get wireless power so you can take that old thing anywhere.

An Interesting Property of Champernowne's Number

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0000

What is it?

Most have probably never heard of Champernowne’s Number. I hadn’t either until recently.

Champernowne’s Number is constructed of all the integers in lexicographical order. It looks like this in base 10: 0.123456789101112131415161718192021… and like this in base 2: 0.11011100101110111100010011010… and on and on.

It’s interesting for a few reasons. First, it’s a transcendental number. It’s also a normal number (meaning the distribution of finite sequences in the number are uniform). It never repeats. It was the first constructed normal number. It’s normal in both base 10 and base 2.

Wikiracing

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Edit:

Well, I was all excited for about four days before I came across Wikiracing. I should have known this would have been thought up long ago.

This was going to be a follow up post after talking to my friend Chris. We thought up waypoints and a better scoring scheme. Now, the only interesting addition to what already exists is the concept of big bonus points for following a link away from Wikipedia and then another link back into Wikipedia along the path.

A Note On Post Length

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0000

I originally started this whole shindig as an exercise to improve my writing process. I was anxious, as a matter of course, to improve my ability enough to at least come out with a coherent thought or two and, if I was lucky, make it through a very long, arduous National Novel Writing Month.

Well, I did that. I didn’t finish the book by any stretch. But there’s a 52,000 word manuscript sitting around, still percolating, and I do have high hopes of finishing it off sometime before twenty years passes. There’s no expectation of being published, but it would be nice to point to and say, “yeah, I wrote that.”

Standard Keyboard Shortcuts for Text Navigation

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:00:00 +0000

Keyboard shortcuts are the fundamental key to speed and efficiency in dealing with a computer. Nowhere is this more visible than the text editor: still both the most basic and the most profound computer application.

Editors pushed keyboard shortcutting in the 1970s to places most people still never see, and never will see.

While it’s clear that most users, even advanced users, will never care to grok the many Vim navigation techniques, there’s still a huge world of improvement for even simple tasks. But before we get into them, there’s the question of why most users will never use :%s/search/replace/c or even M-x M-c. Duh, most people use the mouse. Most people use Windows too. They don’t get the chutzpah of Unix, the power of little tiny commands and manipulations for atomic tasks.

Letter to the SEB - 2009 Nationals Courses, Thoughts, and Thanks

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:00:00 +0000

SEB,

I wanted to briefly express my happiness after the 2009 Solo Nationals and Pro Finale in Lincoln, Nebraska. The site chosen was worlds better than HPT and better even than Forbes! The entire event ran very efficiently, Lincoln was a wonderful host city, and the site itself felt like a Mecca of concrete. I hope we stay in Lincoln for years and years.

I wanted to add my hopes and constructive criticisms for improving the event in the future:

Sensible Hire Defaults

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:00:00 +0000

Recently, I’ve been close enough to hiring decisions to realize two things:

Those hiring go about it all wrong.
Because of this, it’s remarkably easy to bullshit your way through an interview.

All too often, teams, projects, or companies bring on people that they quickly realize are either completely or partially worthless. The hiree doesn’t actually have the skills on their resume, or didn’t have a very large part in that system they said they built, or whatever. And then all of a sudden you have someone who, because they’re quite probably a nice person, you’ll have a remarkably hard time firing despite the fact that they’re a drag on your code production.

The Age of Methuselah

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0000

There’s been an increasing amount of discussion about human lifespan and the potential through medicine and technology to extend it past what could be considered natural. Hans Rosling and others have described the massive jumps the last century has seen in life expectancy and relative quality of life. These jumps have occurred around the world, not just in the more developed countries.

An American in 1907 would have expected to live 50 years. In Germany, you’d expect to live to 44. In China, 32. In India, 24.

Customer Service Matters

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Recently, I’ve had a couple of extremely positive experiences in customer service that have made me consider just how important it can be. I wanted to share them with you.

Martin+Osa

A new Martin+Osa store opened up in my nearby mall and I went to check it out on a friend’s recommendation. The clothes were high quality and, more importantly, they fit properly. I’ve long been frustrated by dress shirts built for 45 year old beer bellies.

Denouement

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Now it’s New Year’s. It’s been two months instead of one, and this little place has been empty of new content. Even more drafts sit in situ waiting patiently for substance, but by and large this front has been quiet.

I’ve not been idle.

November

First, I finished NaNoWriMo. The official word count was 50,721. The official page count was 227 according to Scrivener, my new favorite writing program. That really was a wild month, with far more ups and downs than I expected. The word count doesn’t nearly tell the whole story.

See you in a month!

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 04:00:00 +0000

It’s half an hour until midnight, November 1st. The excuses have been put aside. My study is complete; I have a comfy chair, a beautiful large desk, and a delightful stereo with iPod dock. I have a notebook with half-formed plot vehicles, character studies, names, themes, and other random thoughts. It’s time to try to make sense of them and produce some output.

NaNoWriMo is here!

This is a first step for me. Well, second step really. This blog was the first. I’ve always felt inclined to write. I’m drawn to the idea of being able to make coherent in the world ideas that were once only in one’s head. Being so free form, a blog is a great way to start out. You get to make the schedule, you get to choose what to write, and you get to decide when it’s done. This next step is the exact opposite. The only thing I can still decide is the story. But now I’ve got only a month and I’ve got to get out 50,000 words. Holy shit that’s a lot. It’s exciting, and pretty scary.

Six Rules for the Most Important Part of Your Software - Installation and Upgrade

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:00:00 +0000

It doesn’t take the extreme examples to realize that the general state of user interfaces in software suck. The available levels of interface design are passable, bad, and OMG WTF?! If you want to sell a product, it makes sense that you want to quell your user’s use of expletives. In fact, you don’t just want to pacify them with something that’s “good enough”, you want to make them love you. You want them exalting you with such loyalty that they’d rather cut off pieces of anatomy than let someone they care about use a competitor’s deficient product. That’s how you increase your sales, your branding, and your karma in the world.

Absentmindedness and Smart People

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 03:00:00 +0000

I had an interesting experience a little while back visiting a user of the product I help develop at work. This particular user was clearly bright. He had a firm grasp of the tool and its capabilities. But I was struck watching him manipulate a computer. This guy was leaning forward in his seat, angled towards the screen that sat on the narrowest part of his desk. The keyboard and mouse on his desk seemed an afterthought. His feet were planted firmly on the ground out in the open of the cubicle rather than under the desk. He stared at the screen waiting expectantly, as if you had to get a response from the computer before doing anything else. His input was synchronous - give an input, take an output, evaluate, and give another input. As he manipulated the mouse, he actively searched for the commands he wanted, rather than knowing exactly where to guide the mouse next.

A Contrarian View - Why Should I Vote?

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Anticipation (typical unrelated opening paragraph)

Anticipation is a bitch. I’m two weeks away from starting one helluva task. My days are filled with a haze of energy at work. My evenings are filled with social commitments and slowly increasing free time to sit in my newly finished study - my haven - surrounded by mellow music and belt out the occasional rational thought. Both are currently frequented by stomach churning of increasing amplitude as I try to keep my nerves in check. I don’t know what I’m made of yet, I’ve made it a point to avoid the limits, to always retain an excuse in case of failure. This time the excuses are getting checked. The limits don’t exist. In two weeks, it’s make or break time. I’ll either reach 50,000 words or I won’t. I’m not expecting a masterpiece. I want to follow the NaNoWriMo philosophy - I want to stop reaching for the thesaurus every 5 seconds, the excuse machine (Internet) every 2 seconds, and prove that I’ve got enough mettle to suffer through the highs and lows and actually produce something that could, after countless hours of frustration spent fixing it, become a lucid and interesting story. God it scares me. This whole little rant being only 2400 words and 2.5 hours of work, it scares me even more (The NaNoWriMo 50K count breaks down to 1667 a day). Still, in the middle of cold sweats, nervous tics, excitement, character traits, and scene outlines, I’ve had some thoughts moldering that I wanted to get out before they’re too stale to resurrect.

An Automated Method For Making Your Writing Suck Less

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Inspiration

Last night I was on a roll. I had all these thoughts going through my head. I had the main bits down for how to improve my method of writing and I was going through it point by point. I had viable arguments and even specific sentence structures all setup and ready to go. The thoughts were flowing like drainage off my overwatered garden.

I was in bed the whole time. I didn’t get up. I didn’t write anything. That was a huge mistake.

Apple's Recent Missteps

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Apple is known for its exceedingly well planned and executed products. They charge a premium for them and they’ve built a fiercely loyal customer base because of the quality level. Mac computers are simply the best computers available, iPods are the best music players, and the iPhone is the best phone - all by a wide margin. But they’ve started blundering ever so slightly. Not enough to destroy any of the religiosity surrounding them just yet, but they need to pick their pace back up to its normal level.

Everything's A Library

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 03:00:00 +0000

I seem to alternate between one technical and one (somewhat) non-technical post - excepting travel logs. That’s fine by me. It provides some harmony and balance to at least one thing I do. That’s important on any task, though usually I fail abysmally. If I’m working out consistently, I’m giving something else up. If I’m doing a lot of coding, I’m not seeing much sunlight. The world runs on trends, so I suppose it makes sense that individuals do the same thing. Another trend I follow is an introductory paragraph that has nothing to do with anything. Like this one.

Coda

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:00:00 +0000

I have just one last vacation post before I get back to somewhat regularly scheduled programming. Since my trip I’ve had a bunch of other topics that have accumulated in sort of half finished form. Presently they’re all about as ambiguous as that last sentence, but hopefully I’ll get them finished sooner then later.

And for no particular reason, this blog post is dedicated to Zoe.

For most of my travel recollections, I’ve tried to focus a lot more on my activities and impressions at specific moments. The real purpose was to log what I did so I could remember it. I’ve mostly avoided any general themes from the entire trip, aside from asides, thinking it would be more valuable to contain them all in one place. This is that place.

The Weekend

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Friday was my recovery day. The last week and a half had been a whirlwind, so it was time to relax. I slept in Friday, and participated in a meeting at PTG Gateway’s corporate restaurant (a small deli in the park). A bunch of photo processing, writing, and reading filled my afternoon, followed by my first serious game of badminton ever, which I really enjoyed. Nigel (Neil’s friend and business partner) took it easy on me, but Neil felt inclined to kill a rookie. That’s fine - he needs something to let him keep the illusion of not being old (gee, are you reading this?). I can’t wait to play racquetball next time he comes here. After another barbeque and some time in front of the fire pit, it was time for bed.

Thursday

Thu, 29 May 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Thursday was Libby’s last day in Britain before flying back to Ireland for two more weeks in Galway. Like Tuesday, we had big plans to see a lot of London and came up short; not for lack of trying, but simply because every landmark in London is so remarkable. The entire cityscape is built and outlined with the riches of the last thousand years.

Westminster Abbey

In particular, Westminster was the big time killer for the day. I could have spent the entire day there. Westminster was founded sometime in the 9th or 10th century. Over the next ten centuries, it has remained one of the epicenters for both spiritual and state power in Britain, and it’s collection of graves and memorials is perhaps unrivaled throughout the entire world. Only in Italy and the Holy Land can I think of any comparable sites, and they rival Westminster only in distinction and renown, not in volume.

A Surprise (actually, two)

Fri, 23 May 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Onward

I had been told to keep Wednesday open for some pre-scheduled events. As usual, I was a little hesitant whenever I have no control and someone has something planned. I just don’t like that feeling. Luckily, I usually like what’s decided for me better than what I would’ve done. And that’s how it turned out.

We left early and got on the M25. For the 73rd time, I asked where we were going. For the first time I got an answer. “South,” Sue said. Brilliant. Big help. Saving it to the last minute!

First Day in London

Fri, 16 May 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Insta-Travel!

This whole car thing is seriously overrated. And this is coming from a seriously big car enthusiast. Over the course of this trip I travelled by foot, bicycle, motorbike, car, bus, coach, underground, train, boat, and plane. We only used a car when we had to, the rest of the time we used the infrastructure in place. It was more pleasant, easier, and didn’t detract from the day the way that sitting in a car seems to. I’ll have more to say about this at some point soon, but for now I just wanted to interject that little comment.

A Brief Introduction to Britain

Tue, 13 May 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Libby and I continued the next day to London, while Katie headed back to DC. We flew Ryan Air to Stansted (unbelievably cheap, although watch out for checked luggage charges - there’s a 15kg maximum and they bite you with last minute checked bags), a far nicer airport than Heathrow. I’m not too keen on flying so I was pleased it was only an hour flight.

Cambridge

We met Neil and Sue just through customs, I made introductions, and they treated us to our first surprise of the trip. Since it was a Bank Holiday and neither of them were working, we headed up to Cambridge for the afternoon.

Driving to the Cliffs of Moher

Mon, 12 May 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Pictures

Just a quick note to say that, even though I’m way behind in detailing my recollections of this trip, all of the Ireland pictures are up, along with most of the pictures from the UK and France.

Pictures are here.

Cliffs of Moher

After the trip back down the Connemara coast, we stopped at the Budget rental agency on Eyre Square to pick up our car. I was pleased we were starting the driving portion of the trip in a smaller city and heading off to Dublin rather than the other way around. This would give me a chance to get acquainted with mirroring all of my driving habits without having to navigate the streets of a city. We picked up our Ford Focus and all of our stuff from Libby’s apartment where we had left it, and got under way.

Aran Islands

Sat, 03 May 2008 03:00:00 +0000

We had a full day for exploring Galway before embarking for Inishmor. It was spent leisurely - walking about, peeking into little shops, eating. We trekked up to Salthill, a slightly ritzier area just west of the town center. Apparently there’s a wall around that has the magical ability to add seven years to your life should you kick it. Our expected time to burial remains unchanged however, as it’s a hidden wonder, especially from foolish stateside travels that happen to hear of it.

Arrival in Galway

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 03:00:00 +0000

We’ve arrived! I’m sitting in our room at the SleepZone hostel in Galway. The plane from Dulles was.. interesting. There was quite a bit of turbulence ascending out of Dulles, and then again about midway through. It was enough to make my stomach turn a bit, and I don’t think I did much more than doze off for about thirty minutes. Katie and I grabbed a bagel when we landed, found our bus, and were off across the countryside by 8:20 AM.

A New Travelog Begins!

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:00:00 +0000

In about 8 hours time, I’ll be moving down a runway at 150+ mph in an Airbus A340 ready to take off for Dublin, Ireland. I figured since I have a blog, it would be a lot easier than sending out mass emails, forgetting people, etc. So that’s what I’ll be doing. I hope to update this as we traipse across the countryside, or, at the very least, record things and post them later. Plus, since I only have a 2 GB SD card for my camera right now, I’ll probably be uploading as I go.

Six Relaxing and Enjoyable Things You Probably Already Do But Could Be Done Better

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Wow. That’s a really long post title. It gets the point across though.

Tonight I stopped by my friends’ house to hang out for a little while. We sat in the kitchen and chatted briefly before somehow deciding unconsciously that we needed to be doing something. You know, play a board game, or watch basketball, or.. something. I’m not really sure why though. Is it so hard now to simply do one thing? To just talk. To just sit. To do one thing at a time, instead of, shudder multitask.

You've Got To Be Kidding Me

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Sometimes the universe is just weird. Not weird in the things-are-really-completely-random way, but in the profound-truth-that-I-can’t-possibly-understand way. You know, Banack-Tarski Paradox weird. Euler’s Identity weird. Weird like Monty Hall weird.

Ok, I don’t really mean Monty Hall, I mean the Monty Hall Problem named after him. But I’m sure he is weird. Everything that was popular in the 70s was weird.

Anyway, the Monty Hall Problem. It’s pretty weird. The basic premise goes like this: you get to choose 1 of 3 doors. 1 of the 3 doors has a new car behind it, the other 2 have goats. After you’ve made your choice, Monty Hall shows you a goat behind one of the doors, and asks if you’d like to switch doors to the other remaining unopened door. Is there a statistical difference between your two choices? (For a precise definition, see the Wikipedia article.

Real Work Happens in Dark Rooms

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:00:00 +0000

Sometime when I was young, my family got dimmer switches in our family room. I used to make it my goal in the evening to set the switch to the lowest possible setting that would still emit light from the bulbs. It was fun to see just how little light could illuminate objects across the room.

In bed at night, I often kept a flashlight with me, so that I could read surreptitiously under the covers past bedtime. Naturally, I used the flashlight to illuminate as little as possible in my bedroom too. I had an alarm clock with a bright red digital display. The less light was visible, the larger the contrast between the red display and the rest of the room. The red seemed to burn into my brain. But turn the lights on, and it didn’t seem very bright. So I tried keeping the flashlight under the covers and rotating it in an arc to linearly grade the amount of light that went into the room. The more light that escaped into the room, the more color was available. I could get so little light out that it seemed like everything, even though I could still see it, was in shades of gray. This was before I learned the ROYGBIV mnemonic for the visible light spectrum, but I started to get pretty interested in light and quickly learned of it. It seemed like a discovery at the time, albeit only a personal one. Looking back now it seems obvious.

Eat Flaming Death. Hehe.

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Aside from being an amusing bit of humor, this situation characterizes something that bothers me about how a lot of people tend to use a computer. In fact, I think it’s one of the primary differences between those considered computer-savvy and those that are not.

Those that know what they’re doing engage in play.

A computer is not something that breaks easily (nowadays), and usually most breaking is hardware based, not software based. So unless you have sensitive data that requires saving (a quick operation generally), it should be fairly easy and unassuming to simply play.

Knight's Tour, Take Two

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Well, after last night’s post I did a little bit of reading on better ways to do this, aside from my horrible, ridiculously slow recursive implementation. Turns out that a guy named Warnsdorff discovered a clever little heuristic for the recurvsive implementation in the 19th century. All you do is take all the possible moves for each one of your possible moves and move to the next square with the least number of possible moves. This works for small boards ( less than 76x76). A bunch more is described on Wolfram’s MathWorld.

Not much to see here yet..

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Finally, I have a proper blog again. It’s been a long time coming, since I’ve wanted to do a bunch of things in the process: learn Wordpress a bit better, setup Feedburner, Tumblr, Twittr, switch hosting, etc. Oh, and of course there’s always the whole real life gig that tends to take up so much time. In the meantime, I’ve also bought a new car (finally, no more $3.80/gallon diesel), done some furniture shopping, and done a lot of planning for 2008. It’s proving to be an exciting year.

Knight's Tour, Take One

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 04:00:00 +0000

There’s been a lot of little stuff that I’ve been wanting to practice in the Java language that I haven’t gotten the chance to look at in my day job. So I decided to set myself a little task to try a couple of things. I’d never really used Generics at all, and I’d never used Java Web Start. On top of that, I wanted a little bit of extra algorithm practice (this seems to be a recurring theme, what with Project Euler, etc.. maybe I’m just masochistic in general). I’ve always been fascinated with chess, even though I’m an abyssmal player. Throughout history, a lot of very smart people have been fascinated with all of the combinations of moves and strategies. Some of them became particularly fascinated with the idea of a Knight’s Tour - that is the movement of a Knight about a chessboard so that it hits each square only once. Well, with code it’s possible to come up with lots of solutions on variously sized boards. So that’s what I decided to do.

Post

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 03:00:00 +0000

“Hello World!”, Foo, or whatever other placeholder you’d like to call this :)

Antecedents

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 05:00:00 +0000

The cobblestone steps

lay bare in fluid echoes

of the men who in antiquity

poured a base of enlightenment

from the wills of their fathers.

And as I turn a corner

descending those same steps

the incarnadine sky increases

with the same dreams and drive

that I hope my sons will have.

Based on thoughts from Italy. Written afterwards.

Remarks on the First Anniversary of Catholicism

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 08:00:00 +0000

Here I am, slightly over one year into my journey as a Catholic, preparing again for Holy Week and Easter. It seems a reasonable time to pause and reflect. I stand today, perhaps outwardly no different a man than I was then, except for one important distinction: I am aware, as Confucius would say, of the extent of my own ignorance. It’s not a scary experience though, as it is a revelatory process guided entirely by the life of Christ surrounding me. In one short year, I’ve also been able to witness many amazing events. I was blessed to count myself Catholic for one entire week of the Papacy of John Paul the Great. Nevertheless, after learning so much from the man, I feel privileged to have watched his passing as a member of his flock. I have been a part of the excitement of the beginnings of a new papacy, and followed it thus far to the promulgation of its first encyclical. It’s been a wild, often overwhelming, ride.

Misnomers in Solo2

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 05:00:00 +0000

While I’ve been champing at the bit, I’ve been thinking lately about some very common concepts in autocross that many people adhere to 100% of the time, when they really aren’t 100% concepts. So with that in mind, I thought I’d start a discussion on these things and see what people thought. Here’s my thoughts on a couple of topics..

Late Apexes

Our general inclination when looking at any turn on a course is to say, “Ok, how do I late apex that.” There are specific occasions, however rare, where a late apex is not the right line. I’ll give two examples..

(Flat) Taxes

Mon, 28 Mar 2005 05:00:00 +0000

It’s that time of year again, when in a frenetic mess we all try to perform our solemn duty of paperwork imposed upon us by the machinations of our state: income tax. It’s a time-honored tradition dating back as long as we can remember, and our government is fair and equitable when it comes to our finances. Besides, this country was founded on beautiful, timeless self-evident truths, and our government’s principles are all derived from them.