Finished watching: Silo (2023). Incredibly slow start, but every episode was better than the last, and the final scene is worth all ten episodes. I’m not sure if it was better that I’d read the books first, or worse because I didn’t …
Reading
How to Take Smart Notes
Sönke Ahrens
I had forgotten how much getting a car serviced costs. My 2014 Altima has been solid since I got it in 2016, modulo oil changes and tire changes, but today it needed some (expensive) help.
It was a lot of time and a lot of money, but I guess I can’t …
books
Finished reading: Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft. Tremendously dissatisfying. A chaotic run through a fascinating world, but the plot was so contrived to prevent progress as to frustrate me with every page turn.
Not recommended. If you want a …
My First iOS Apps
Today, Phil Schiller celebrated the 15th anniversary of the iOS App Store, and many people posted the first apps they downloaded. Here are mine.
Pharrell Williams's "Happy" as a Spenserian Sonnet
Back in 2014, there was a Twitter account, or maybe a Tumblr account, that published pop songs as sonnets1. I loved the spin on genre, but I noticed that they were all Petrarchan (Italian) sonnets, which go ABBA ABBA CDE CDE, or Shakespearean …
Finished watching: Ted Lasso. Three seasons and only two clunkers. Amazing record. It’s not common that we get a mostly wholesome high-quality smash hit show, and I’m so glad to have seen it. Believe! 🍿
I Made a Swift Game
I’ve been obsessed with Demonin’s Array Game since Andy Baio linked to it a month ago.
After getting effectively to the current endgame (there’s no real end, but at some point there’s no “next upgrade”), it …
I just accidentally used the Universal Control feature built into macOS Ventura. I had set up my work MacBook Pro next to the monitor for my personal Mac mini, where I used to keep my laptop when it was connected to this monitor. So I naturally just …
photos
Gave a bunch of stuff back to Apple today. These computers got both Meera and me through college and grad school, and it’s time to let go.
The white iPod (3rd gen, I think) was a birthday present when I turned 17 or 18; the iPods Touch tided me over …
photos
travel
Makeshift parfait at the BOS (Logan) Admiral’s Club this morning waiting for our flight back to Austin. 📸
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travel
Brunch at In A Pickle in Waltham ahead of a wedding yesterday afternoon. Hot honey chicken and waffles, pumpkin bread French toast, and coffee. Perfect.
Today I discovered Merlin Mann’s Wisdom Project, and it’s the kind of thing at least part of my Micro.blog should aspire to be.
Little snippets that are helpful to me now and might be helpful to me or others later.
Some of them are very …
photos
Mostly final desk setup, shown here during a video conference we were both attending (on the iPad). The room looks mostly the same, except it has real curtains now and more stuff on the shelves. And we don’t use it nearly as often—we’re in the office …
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Our other early-COVID desk, set up not in the office but the guest bedroom. Like everyone else, my wife and I spent too much time on videoconferences to sit in the same room, so we were fortunate to have space to spread out like this. Same monitor, …
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Standing desk evolution, a few weeks in COVID. At this point, we still had the blinds open to remind us what “outside” looked like. It still kind of felt like vacation, not yet like the terrifying pandemic it turned out to be. (It did, and still …
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Our home office desk before COVID. Made of an old kitchen table and K’nex, naturally. 📸
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Day three of desk pictures. This one is an actual working desk of mine from my first apartment in San Antonio after grad school. It looks so much like my grad school desk in my Blackburg apartment I first guessed that’s what it was before …
photos
travel
Yesterday’s desk post made me think of other interesting writing desks I’ve encountered.
This one is from our house in Sóller, Majorca, Spain, from November 2021.
An iPad instead of a MacBook because this was a vacation, not a business trip.
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travel
My workspace at Hotel Bellevue in Cazaubon, France, a few weeks ago. I love the aesthetic, but it made me feel like I should be writing a novel instead of PowerPoint slides. 📸
Cleaning out and backing up my college/grad school MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2008), and the nostalgia is strong in this one.
Sure, its 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo isn’t that impressive, and neither is its 4GB of DDR2 or 256GB GeForce 8600M, but it is weirdly …
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travel
In Corpus Christi for Rio Texas Annual Conference. Tried out Railroad Brewing Company right by the convention center. 📸
photos
Felt bad that I didn’t get much done yesterday, so this picture is to remind me of what I did finish this weekend. Let’s get the short week started strong. 📸
books
Finished reading: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. Slow start for an amazing ending. Fun wordplay and enough mystery to hunt down the sequel. 📚
photos
Pro tip: when the sky looks like this, the best time to leave work was half an hour ago. 📸
books
Finished reading: The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson. A fun, quick read. Pretty un-Sanderson. Seems like he was experimenting with style, similar to Tress, just not in the Cosmere. 📚