Thoughts, and ramblings about technology, programming, history, and whatever else I'm interested in.
It was a sweltering August day. I made my way across the promenade, and through the bustling crowd, to a small line forming outside the Timkin Art Museum. Inside, I stumbled on Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Parable of the Sower , painted in 1557, nearly five centuries ago. Photo: The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei When Bruegel took his brush to this canvas, the New World had…
As with seemingly every other man my age, I've taken up running to stay fit. Your metabolism slows as you age and what used to come for free with youth now takes time and deliberate effort to maintain. I don't care for the running, but it needs to be done. The thing is: it does give me lots of idle time to think, just like a long walk. Both have become for me a form of meditation, a way to…
What allows you to make friends and to keep them? Being a social person helps with making friends, surely. As does putting in the effort to be a good friend. But I'm sure we've all had the experience of wanting to become friends with someone, but yet it never really happens. Maybe there's never the time. Maybe you're too far apart, and I mean that literally. This is something I've observed over…
There is a difference between knowing something, and truly understanding it. I think we've all had those moments, the ones where a truth you learned a long time ago really sits with you for the first time. It rests in your mind and stretches out, finally showing off the great expanse of nuance hidden deep within. Photo: mine. Most nights when you happen to spy the Moon, Jupiter, and Venus sitting…
Last year I heard this song from a band called Loser Demon. The song is called Holding Ground and here's the chorus that has been stuck in my soul ever since (added words, mine): would you believe that this is it and it is good? doesn't surprise me and i hope that it never would (I'm) holding ground I heard that phrase and was immediately repulsed the first time, yet something about it lingered in…
It's Saturday morning, and you have no plans. Perhaps your schedule happened to line up that way, perhaps the kids are gone, or maybe it's just luck. Regardless, it's glorious. You bask in the glow of a lazy morning while you decide just how you're going to spend today. In your mind you go over different ideas, considering each and its consequences. You could go to the beach! No, too much effort.…
Let's say you're someone who wants to learn about an academic discipline. Perhaps advanced Physics, Sociology, Early-Modern History, or Cognition Science. Of course, there's YouTube pop-sci videos (which I love) and no shortage of products and services that purport to teach you the basics. But what do you do when you want to go beyond those basics? I'm not an expert, but I have been on a few of…
I could do that, I just need more time. In life we are constantly wishing we had more of something: time, money, friends, energy, etc., and we develop plans to try and meet these goals. We alter our diets, our schedules, we start exercising or reading more. Often times these changes result in significant improvements to our lives. Yet, we never have the energy, the time, or the money that we want.…
Sometimes I can't tell if I'm discovering a cool new hobby, or just getting old. Regardless, today I come to you with a tale of a little endeavor of mine. In early 2020, a family member took a job far from home and, because of the nature of the work, would therefore be out of cell service for large swaths of time. As a gag, we decided to communicate via long-form letters over email as well as the…
Researching a topic is hard, because not only are you trying to puzzle together the causes and effects of a given problem or historical series of events, you're also looking out carefully for leads and new threads to pull. Falling down rabbit holes is common—and encouraged—but eventually you need to pull yourself back out and collect your thoughts. What's more, if you're reading books…