This year was the year I rediscovered how much I love to code. At the beginning of the year AI coding assistants were good enough to help overcome all the annoying hurdles of getting a new project going and were good enough at writing small chunks of code that I could bring ideas to life [ ]
It s been awhile since I wrote here, but not since I wrote! In fact, I ve blogged more this year than any year any the recent past. It s all happening on my new photography website marcus.pictures. Please check it out! It s a constant work in progress. My latest project there is figuring out how to [ ]
As I get older (have I mentioned lately that this blog has been online continuously since 2003, 20 years now) I don t have much patience for reading anything but the best books. I want to read a magnum opus. The defining work in the field. If it s fiction, I want the the apotheosis of the [ ]
As promised and previously updated here and here, I read 50 (51 actually) books in 2021. One of the last books I read this year, and easily one of my favorites, was Ridgeline by Michael Punke, who also wrote The Revenant. It describes the fight between Capt. William Fetterman and the Sioux chief Crazy Horse [ ]
A juvenile plover from last September. This photo was taken on a little island that, during non-pandemic times, is accessible by a ferry and a popular picnicking spot. Last year it was mostly deserted since the ferry wasn t running and it was only accessible by kayak.
This year I got to see one of my favorite birds, the Brown Pelican, on both US coasts. This set is a few shots of Brown Pelicans on the Pacific Ocean along the Oregon coast.
My three favorite Russian authors are Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Nabokov which makes these two interview questions and answers amusing: Why do you dislike writers who go in for soul-searching and self-revelations in print? After all, do you not do it at another remove, behind a thicket of art? If you are alluding to Dostoevski’s worst [ ]
This one s a bit half-baked, but is it useful to think of the product management lifecycle as a Boyd-style OODA loop? Observe: Gather data about the product and market. Is the market the same today as it was yesterday? What are your competitors doing? Who are the unlikely market disruptors? How will regulation or oversight [ ]
Confusing experience with the memory of it is a compelling cognitive illusion—and it is the substitution that makes us believe a past experience can be ruined. The experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living, [ ]
One holds the Whole dear not out of love for the Whole; rather, it is out of love for oneself that one holds the Whole dear. by reflecting and concentrating on one s self, one gains the knowledge of this whole world. Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 2.4