List of common misconceptions
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This Wikipedia page is a firehose of fascinating, bite-sized pieces of trivia.
Welcome to my blog! This is mostly a link blog, where I share links to articles and websites that I would otherwise share with my IRL friends. From time to time, I also write my own posts and longer-form entries. You can also subscribe to this blog in an RSS feed reader.
Here are the topics I tend to cover. → Click on a tag to see all the posts about that topic.
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This Wikipedia page is a firehose of fascinating, bite-sized pieces of trivia.
Iām drawn to blogging because it makes me happy on several levels. I love sharing what Iāve learned. I love entertaining people and spreading joy. I love having a collection of the topics I was interested in at various points in my life. I love being able to practice honing my writing skills. And I love having a place on the internet that is completely my own.
I built my own Ruby on Rails app to handle it. I chose it because I wanted to get better at writing Rails apps.
Iāve had a personal website since 1998. Itās had many iterations and name changes and designs. I miss building websites for fun. So Iām doing it again because hey, itās still fun as hell to do cool things with these computers of ours.
Oh yeah. At first, it was all handwritten HTML, but Iāve tried a few different content management systems like Movable Type, LiveJournal, and Wordpress.
My longer form pieces are often written in TextMate. Iāll launch a locally-running version of my site and test out formatting and whatnot before I copy and paste it into my production site.
My monthly observation posts are mostly a collection of my daily journalistic entries. Around the first day of the month, Iāll slowly re-read what I wrote about the previous month and edit the interesting nuggets down into something coherent.
For my link posts, I use a custom iPhone Shortcut. When I navigate to a URL in Safari that I wanna share here, my shortcut will grab whatever is in the <title>
, then grab the URL sans any UTM or tracking params, then drop whatever I may have highlighted into a Markdown quote in a text field. I then type up my thoughts and hit publish.
This approach works great for me because there is almost zero friction to post. It only sucks when I accidentally close out of the text field, or when I write something substantially long1. I also have to remember to navigate to the article to add tags. I should probably add that into the Shortcut process at some point.
Iām the most inspired to write whenever my thoughts begin to run away. Writing forces me to grab hold of a single thread of my swirling inner dialogue and crystalize it.
When I got laid off last year, I decided to force myself to journal every single night. I didnāt lay any other parameters: I didnāt give myself any word counts or topics or agendas. Simply write.
Now that I have a journaling habit, I find that I write my thoughts down often throughout the day. Iām inspired to write whenever I make myself laugh, or whenever I feel a light bulb go off in my head, or whenever I need a break from my negative self talk.
Short link posts are almost always published immediately. Longer posts will simmer for a day or two before I eventually force myself to publish. I am pretty diligent about editing things a day or two after that, as well. For this post, Iām gonna publish it as soon as Iām done here.
I donāt have a favorite. Every single post Iāve made on here makes me cringe when I read it back, even if itās only 24 hours later.
I plan to keep writing. I should probably upgrade the Rails engine here soon.
I also have this idea of building a āgardenā here. I came across the idea of a personal site being more like a garden, and I am really vibing with that sentiment. The first step for me is to build this cool 8-bit landscape entirely in vanilla CSS, HTML, and JS. From there, Iād like to have some self-composed, optimistic lo-fi playing in the background. As one sits in the scene, various phrases and quotes will fade in and out of view.2
I mentioned my journaling habit above, and I think another goal of mine for the year is to keep up the monthly observation posts. Writing down my thoughts is helpful, and getting a bit of distance from those thoughts gives me a fresh perspective of them.
Despite seeing my own site show up in my feed on other peopleās sites, I still feel like nobody ever reads this blog. So Iāll admit I felt incredibly dorky writing this post because it reminds me of how these sorts of things used to be hella prevalent back on the web when I was growing up.
But also: isnāt the point of doing these things to have fun and learn how other people approach a hobby that youāre interested in? These āchallengesā serve as a collective bonding moment, an opportunity to collectively reflect on why we like this loose-knit community of goofy misfits who know what an RSS feed is.
So hereās how Iāll pass the torch: if youāve seen these kinds of posts pop up in your own feeds these past couple weeks, copy this and do it yourself and shoot me a note when youāre done. I guarantee youāll get at least one other person here who will be interested in your stories! šāāļø
When this happens, Iāll write the contents out using the Apple Notes app. Iāll then copy that text, re-run the Shortcut, and paste the edited text into the text field. ↩
Iām sure next to nobody will want to look at this thing, but I feel empowered and motivated to build something. And until I can acquire my 3D printer and more carpentry tools, Iāll have to settle for making my virtual space more serene and inspirational. Again, if only for myself. ↩
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Listen.
This blog doesnāt always have to share deep, thoughtful posts.
Sometimes, it pays to take a minute1 and appreciate that we live on the timeline where this moment was captured, uploaded to the internet, and then viewed 54,000,000 times. Humanity isnāt always bleak.
Also, I wish more people were this honest about what they were delivering. Because this video is 100% what you see on the tin.
Or more accurately, a mere 24 seconds! ↩
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This post deeply resonates with me.
Never give up seeking truth, however uncomfortable it is. Search for knowledge. Adjust your worldview. Ask. Rewrite outdated code. Drop faulty hypotheses and unreliable foundations.
Software author is, first of all, a writer. They are a person who stands upright and says: āthatās what I know for now, and thatās my best attempt to explain it.ā Having this stance, preferring it to everything else, and hiding behind terms, concepts, and authority are invaluable qualities for long-term project success.
Or, basically, for any long-term human activity success.
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This makes me miss playing in an orchestra, and it also makes me miss playing PokƩmon as a kid.
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When Iām in the zone, problems seem more straightforward. Even complex tasks feel pretty doable. Once I notice that, I try to pack my time with high-priority work only. Iāll put off responding to all but really important messages (Slackās āremind me laterā is a great feature). I also try as hard as I can to avoid multi-tasking, so I can keep my entire attention on getting a single task right at a time. If I feel like continuing to work through the evening, I let myself do that, knowing Iāll give myself the time back the next day or the one after that.
When Iām not in the zone, every task seems complex and rife with booby-traps. I feel like I have to proceed defensively and avoid taking risks. On days like these, I try and knock out easy wins and donāt worry so much about prioritization. I do a lot of general talking and bouncing between multiple projects. I donāt feel so bad about stopping work earlier than usual, knowing that at some point Iāll make it up with a period of hard focus
Iāve been reading Sean Goedeckeās blog for a few weeks now, and it is exceptionally helpful to hear these words at this point in my career.
This post spoke to me because Iām working on a project at work where itās been hard to achieve flow for consistent periods of time.
Iām sharing this to remind myself that itās okay to have rough days, and the important thing is to be honest with yourself and show up every day, even (especially?) if you donāt want to.
My latest self-improvement experiment is determining what environmental factors will induce flow. I canāt seem to find the right album, the right physical space, the right combination of stimulants and exercise, the right amount of āsmall winsā, whatever it might be to help trigger the excitement that comes when I get into flow.
The most consistently successful approach has been to completely accept my current situation and problem solve as best I can in that exact moment. In other words, I ask myself: how can I win this moment?
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With you. With my wife. With my kids. With my parents. With my boss. With everyone I work with. With every other Rails developer. With everyone on BlueSky. With everyone.
At least, on some things.
And thatās ok.
I should print this entire article out and hand it to everybody I know. Required reading for anyone who is trying to understand how to articulate the meaning of empathy.
One thing Iāll add: I recently listened to a podcast where they talked about the significance of music played in a church. Basically, at any point prior to the last ~150 years, if you wanted to hear music, you either had to make it yourself or physically go somewhere to experience it.
There was no permanence about music other than maybe sheet music and your memory of it.
Any time prior to 2010, I loved hearing Ignition (Remix). I heard it again the other day and had a visceral reaction against it. I turned it off and moved on.
Itās okay that I used to like the song, and itās okay that I do not want to listen to it now.
And itās okay that if I do hear it, I can choose to remember the good times happening all around me with that song as a background track instead of the artist.
This part was also fantastic:
When I type rails c it sure doesnāt feel as if Iāve just given a big thumbs-up to whatever shit-take DHH has just published on his blog. Iām not over here running bundle install fascism.
The thing is, I donāt care about literally anything DHH has to say that isnāt 100% about Rails. I donāt care what sort of moment heās having or which extreme view heās decided to cosy up to today. I donāt care about his social commentary. I donāt follow his blog or subscribe to his feeds. Iām only aware of any of his views when those outraged by it decide to push it into my life. Itās those people who are giving him more power, and elevating his status, outside of the one narrow place where he might deserve it.
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Though Nintendo employs more-modern technologies now, they are still criticized for not having the most-modern technologies that their rivals are all-too-happy to include, often at the cost of compatibility, affordability, and energy efficiency.
This is not a condemnation of using cutting-edge technology. But if given the choice, I prefer ālateral thinking with withered technology.ā I think thatās a great philosophy to consider when making anything.
āLateral thinking with withered technologyā is how I approach building websites. Use battle-tested, slow moving frameworks that donāt depend on a cornucopia of vulnerable third party plugins. :cough cough wordpress react cough sneeze:
HTML and CSS are going nowhere, and vanilla JS can do virtually anything you need these days. Render your stuff server side and keep the client side lightweight.
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We assume that technology must have begun with a weapon (and that the first inventor must have been a man). But as the science-fiction writer Ursula Le Guin pointed out, āthe spearā was probably not the original technology. Archaeologists and anthropologists now increasingly believe that sharpened sticks were invented by women to gather foods, and were adapted for hunting only later. If the first tools werenāt hunting tools it isnāt clear that technology must always seek to crush, dominate and exploit. Female science-fiction authors have often been criticised for not writing āhardā science fiction precisely because they have defined technology in this more neutral sense. As Le Guin put it: āTechnology is just the active human interface with the material world.ā There is nothing inherently violent about it. Unless we want it to be. But the patriarchal imagination doesnāt seem to think it will be up to us to decide this.
There are many justifiable concerns around artificial intelligence, but to say itās all gloom and doom is a severe failure of imagination.
I also loved this closing paragraph:
We talk as if the machines were the active participants in history, and humanity the passive ones. We dance around the machines as if they were deities. Forgetting that we have created them with our own hands. Fed them with data from our own minds. It is a narrative that leaves us both powerless and without responsibility. Owned by our own creations.
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Two years ago, Twitch streamer albrot discovered a bug in the code for crossing rivers. One of the options is to "wait to see if conditions improve"; waiting a day will consume food but not recalculate any health conditions, granting your party immortality.
From this conceit the Oregon Trail Time Machine was born; a multiday livestream of the game as the party waits for conditions to improve at the final Snake River crossing until the year 10000, to see if the withered travellers can make it to the ruins of ancient Oregon. The first attempt ended in tragedy; no matter what albrot tried, the party would succumb to disease and die almost immediately.
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