My first word was cheese
On the weekend before PNW Climate Week I attended a Beginner’s Mind retreat at Great Vow Zen Monastery. The combination of mindfulness while working in the kitchen and garden was exactly what I have been looking for, but the hours in the car and on the cushion were hard on my body. While I know that a sitting practice is important for my mental health, and still find walking meditation very…
Michael Pollan has written about everything from mushrooms to apples and corn, but his coevolutionary story of how tulips and humans shaped each other may have been the most prescient given recent market parallels. GPU compute powering crypto for the last decade has spilled over into a bigger boom in language models. From bulbs, to coins, and now tokens. With animal spirits driving markets higher…
I came to PNW Climate Week curious how I could better serve the planet. That might mean using my software skills to power an organization focused on environmental impact, conservation, or clean energy. It could also look completely different, part of a more conscious lifestyle spent tending community gardens or helping in ways I have yet to dream up. There are a lot of possibilities! Day 1 The…
After 5 years of building software to help social workers support children at Koinonia Family Services , I am ready for a new adventure! It’s been wonderful growing together with the team there through leadership changes, shifts in the field, and evolving technology. My head and heart have been aligned with the mission, and it’s been so fulfilling to serve something bigger than myself. Working on…
Our big brains and hands are meant to serve mother earth, not dominate it. While most people were baking sourdough and watching Netflix during the covid lockdowns, I was streaming permaculture videos. I became obsessed with Kirsten Dirksen’s work documenting places like Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (OAEC) in Northern California and Andrew Millison’s garden in Oregon. It took me 5 years, but…
I’ve written more about yoga than meditation, but both have been vital for my well-being over the years. Yoga was an easier path for me at first as an active person, since it’s hard for me to sit still (and I could do it at the gym!). I’m using “meditation” here rather than Buddhism because to me it implies putting that system of beliefs into practice. Lately I keep returning to meditation as a…
This year was my first time attending the North Coast Men’s Gathering at the Mattole Camp and Retreat Center in the beautiful lost coast town of Petrolia. Huge thanks to the organizers and participants over the last 33+ years who have contributed to such an incredible event! I was blown away at the quantity and quality of men that came out of the woodwork who might not normally have a chance to…
“Eventually after applying for Session 5 of Djangonaut Space, I was selected for Team Mars 🚀 ! I was so inspired that I continued working on the Django issue I had dropped and finally that was merged just yesterday after over a year of work on and off 🎉.” I started using Django in 2012 but focused on JavaScript for several years before returning in 2020. I used the framework extensively and was…
I just got back from a Transformational Breath Essentials 6-Day Seminar at The Clearing Center in North Fork, CA. The land and people there are amazing! I would highly recommend anyone who is interested to go and check it out. I’m super grateful for people like Eddie Ellner and Juliet Wilkins here in Santa Barbara who have helped me down this path. Over the last several years I have found…
When I started this blog in 2013 I used WordPress to avoid reinventing the wheel before moving over to Jekyll in 2016. I never took the time to set up continuous deployment so would SSH into DreamHost (strong CamelCase theme emerging here) then pull the generated static site from a Git submodule. The added friction was just enough so that I wouldn’t post very often. Now I feel super inspired by…