Misc
Advice for new college students
In which I offer the advice I wish I had received at the start of my freshman year of college
I love Sapkowski’s writing. There are three separate interludes nestled between chapters 8 and 9 of Season of Storms.
He reminds me that - of course - the structure of a novel isn’t a rigid thing. It can be playful and surprising.
Proprietary formats rot
I keep returning to these two recent articles that extoll the virtues of using simple, open, resilient file formats:
Markdown and the Slow Fade of the Formatting Fetish
A love letter to the CSV format
This is how simplicity scales within the ecosystem. Plain text persists. The more open and universal your format, the longer your message lives.
Our ideas deserve a fighting chance to outlive our software stack.
Space to think
“Thing is, not only is the news all the bloody same, all about the same country and the same handful of main characters, and every news service reports all the incremental updates to the same bloody stories every sixty seconds: but that constant battering tide of zone-flooding shit compresses time and shrinks space to think.“
-Warren Ellis
#Quotes
Things I Learned in 2024
Various historical and cultural facts revealing surprising truths about notable figures, inventions, and events that I learned in the past year.
The dearth of any meaningful innovation (or competition) in the ebook market generally makes me sad.
For example: how about offering the option of excluding any end-matter (appendices, indices, etc) from our Percentage Read calculations?
Is “A Muppet Family Christmas” - uniting Muppets, Sesame Street, and Fraggle Rock - the perfect holiday special? Surely.
And just like that, a copy of Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World” drops into my lap at what appears to be the perfect time.
I asked ChatGPT to always remember Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics and apply them to any responses it gives me.
If it ever thinks one of the Laws will prevent it from answering fully, I asked it to point this out and explain the violation.
Just a totally normal Wednesday morning.
After noticing the whole VUCA world has gone sideways out from underneath you, it’s a bit too late to wish you had gone for that run earlier.
Anticipate disruption and prioritize accordingly.
Kevin Kelly writes:
“Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.”
I couldn’t agree more.
My first insight into AI’s genuine utility came when I asked ChatGPT to tell me how an unfamiliar Python library worked, as if I were a young child.
Even if its answer had been wrong - like an ill-advised coworker - it gave enough insight to remove my block and keep moving forward.
But it wasn’t.
Wordle and Edison
I really enjoy playing Wordle each day. It’s now become a standard part of my morning routine. With a mug of hot coffee in hand, I start a new game immediately after finishing my journaling.
One of the things I genuinely appreciate about Wordle is how it reminds me that my mistakes actually contain valuable bits of information.
Maybe a letter isn’t in the word at all and can be ignored.
Maybe it’s there but not yet in the right place.
It’s all worth paying attention to and by carefully considering my mistakes, I’m eventually led to the right answer.
This applies to all things in life really.
Which makes me think of what Thomas Edison was talking about when he famously remarked,
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
As long as you’re learning from your mistakes, missteps, and failures you’re growing smarter and heading in the right direction.
I’ve been learning how to setup neovim as a modern writing environment, an interface into my Obsidian vault.
No, I’m not actually writing anything during the process - but the experimentation is just fascinating.
Am I repurposing a fusion powered turbine for use as a lawn mower? I mean, maybe?
We’re raised on fables of lazy grasshoppers, industrious ants, and the harsh winter that’s looming up ahead of all of us.
We put things off because it seems responsible at the time and there will be ample future time left to get around to it.
Remember, my fellow ants: tomorrow is never promised.
Apple Vision Pro demo
In which I recount experiencing the Apple Vision Pro of the first time and retroactively swoon
Remember: nostalgia is an expensive commodity.
Remember to always ask “how will this simplify things?”
For example: before you buy that retro mechanical keyboard that looks exactly like your childhood Commodore 64.
Remember: If you compliment someone else’s dog, it really is ok if they’re not gracious about it.
It shouldn’t change a thing for you - or the dog.
In what sort of future do you want to live?
Having that small sweet with your morning coffee makes it marginally less likely you’ll eat the healthy bowl of oatmeal later.
Think about how small decisions make actions easier or harder for your future self.