This is Matt Haggard's personal website. I'm a dad, who studied Electrical Engineering and programs for a living. I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and some people call my Iffy.
What a pleasant and inspiring read David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers was! Photo by History in HD on Unsplash Here some of my favorite snippets, for you to enjoy, but also for me to remember: Hard work When at Kitty Hawk, the brothers had “help” from one person that turned out to be more talk than walk: As tiresome as anything for the sons of Bishop Wright was to hear Huffaker go on about…
For the first time since college, I’m using a paper planner. And I love it! I’d forgotten how great a paper planner can be. Several months ago I happened upon my friend, Jake Parker’s livestream about the planner he makes. :point_right: Go get a PDF copy to print yourself. His livestream, including his approach to goal-setting, inspired me to consider paper planners: Theoretical changes So at the…
As I sit in the car rider line for our children’s school, I find myself capable of thinking only one thing: can’t we make this blasted line move any faster?!! I’ve considered all kinds of improvements to speed things along. But instead of relying on my own intuition, like any good nerd, I instead built an elaborate simulation engine to answer the question: How do we make car rider lines better? I…
Books are great! Not only can you read them, but you can make computers read them, too. Once upon a time, my brother made a computer read a book and shared this result: Quick side note: this post will probably not work very well on a mobile device. Sorry. To make the image, I made the computer write every word in the book along the top and side of a table. Then it colored each cell black if the…
Elephants aren’t eaten in one sitting, they say. I’m not a part of the elephant-eating public, but the advice has helped me during particularly difficult times. Are your life’s problems sometimes out of control? Maybe your health has deteriorated or your room has become a gigantic mess. Is laundry languishing on couches and floors, cultivating colonies of microscopic life? Mountains of suffocating…
All these were done with Procreate on an iPad. An entry for the SVS Art Contest last June: Some characters I drew for playing with my kids: Coloring page version: A girl, flying? Or skydiving unsafely? A treehouse. I’m undecided about the messy brown painting around the tree. It was intentional, but I’m not sure I like it. I might add something else to this.
One Sunday, I cradled my sleeping newborn on my lap while in a group discussion with about fifty men aged 18 on up. The topic was Parenting. As you might imagine, opinions on the subject were plentiful. Generally, the number of comments shared by a person was inversely proportional to their age. I consider it blessed luck that I happened to be sitting next to a wise, old man from our neighborhood.…
I like to draw and paint sometimes. Here are two semi-recent watercolor paintings. This first was an attempt to copy this photo . My daughter lost the ladybug she was carrying on our way home from church. She was sad, so I suggested we make and hang up Missing signs.
There are two kinds of people in this world: sources and sinks. Those who give and those who take. You know that guy who always makes you feel optimistic and hopeful? He’s a source. As Oscar Wilde put it: Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. Some live as a life-giving spring: feeding and inspiring nearby folks as they wend their way across the land. Anyway… as I work on…
This last weekend, we were challenged to do a mock emergency drill, pretending that our water was contaminated and the electricity was out for two days. Some also pretended their houses were destroyed. We debated doing it for the full 48 hours or just one day. Eventually we settled on one day, and by the end of the day, with a sink full of dishes and a lot of our water gone, I’m glad we did. We…