A mosquito or a fleck of paint? You'll never sleep until you look up close
Chronologically, it sounds funny: I experienced heartbreak, but it felt good, then I went on vacation and it was great, also I met a bunch of friends which was also great, but I also got quite sick which sucked, and also an awesome guest visited in Amsterdam, and my doctors …
June was so busy. My physical health is excellent, but I am mentally and emotionally exhausted. I feel so drained that it took me an unpleasant amount of effort to organize a vacation (which should happen later this month). This was perhaps my most significant learning experience. A couple years …
Approximately six months ago, I decided to start dedicating serious time and attention to dating. For context, last year, I had reflected that after enough changes happened, my life path was now more ready to include someone else than it ever was before, and also that I desired it. To …
Thankfully, my travel intensity decreased in May. It’s good to have some semblance of a routine. I spent my two weekends away from home. For the first, a friend and I visited Maastricht and we had a lovely time together. There were no pictures. Later in the month, I …
For this month’s newsletter, I’m going to try something slightly different. I am still not planning to use LLM assistance to author anything, but this time I am trying dictation and am using a LM (not large) to transcribe my voice. This means that my style is going …
Happy April 1st. No joke from me here; spring has started at last. As of April 1st, my tulips are about to bloom. Our cherry blossom comes in two variants: pink and white. White is my favorite. Either later today or tomorrow, I will use this piece of equipment to …
Gosh, I so needed a vacation. January was a slog, and I started February in a foul mood. I am glad to report things are trending upwards. ❦❦❦ One cool thing that happened in February is that I had solar panels installed. Buckle up, this is nerdy. Here are seven out …
At the start of January, a “snowpocalypse” happened in the Netherlands. As 30cm (~10in) of snow fell over two days, people, cars and trains stayed home. Most planes did too. The airport ran out of de-icing fluid . It was rather pretty, though. It made me happy. Snow in the village …
An out-of-band entry to flush a backlog of topics that don’t fit the monthly updates: Very valid heuristic from this post on Bluesky : If you can substitute “hungry ghost trapped in a jar” for “ AI ” in a sentence it’s probably a valid use case for LLMs. Take “I …
The common thread for December was to put to work certain skills and ambitions that had been brewing for the last year. ❦❦❦ The first was the creation of this dashboard: Music radio channels. Ventilation and air quality overview. What you see here is a cheap Android tablet displaying a Home …
The vibe for November was more studious and activity-oriented. It was surprisingly hard to find a suitable illustrative visual, but I found this funny picture: This is a shot from a city hike with a friend. It’s like a fractal: at a distance it does not look like much …
Following a lovely week with friends visiting from Brooklyn, I headed to visit my mom in the countryside. She is not doing well; there was general weakness when I saw her, and my uncle is reporting bouts of dementia as of this week. We suspect Alzheimer’s disease. As before …
I’m writing this between a busy day and a delightful dinner. Brief by necessity, dense by design. The following is a summary from the (new) development blog . ❦❦❦ From idea to backbone Since March, the spine has held: a humane foundation (content) plus a separate app called “Becoming” that you …
Much has happened and once again sadly I am constrained by time: in just two hours I need to join my visitors and friends from abroad for dinner. ❦❦❦ Visitors from abroad! I truly can’t get enough of them. It is such a pleasure and honor, every time. There’s …
Somehow life caught up and this update nearly missed getting written at all. There is a lull today between two long hectic periods and I will attempt to cram a decent write-up in the few hours available. Still shorter than usual though. ❦❦❦ On the family front, I had to visit …
The next two weeks will be filled with travel without much time to write, so you are getting this month’s update a bit early. Much has happened anyway. ❦❦❦ The situation with my mom is “complicated.” Being able to use the word “complicated” today marks a significant upgrade from my …
“Day in the life:” I am squeezing the typing of a first draft of this post in-between breakfast and leaving for my gym class before lunch. Today is a “no-meeting day” and so I am hoping for a good chunk of work this afternoon. I’m wary of letting that …
As I am typing this, I am feeling the tug of this wonderful fidget toy on my attention, at the corner of my eye. This is a Purple sample. Purple is a mattress brand, and their mattresses are made of this material. With this texture. No other filling than air …
This month: flowers and home improvements. Plus some crazy projects. ❦❦❦ Increasingly, yet moreso in April than earlier, I am making fake excuses to spend more time walking outdoors. The excuses range from “getting groceries” (I could bike, but I don’t) to “getting some fresh air” (after working two hours …
Buckle up: we need to talk about serious stuff. ❦❦❦ Before that, a brief recap of the past few weeks. I was in Austria for a bit more snowboarding. The weather did not look great initially: far too warm and sunny. Afternoon snow was akin to the slush ice you slurp …
You are likely reading this while I rest briefly at home from a fierce jetlag, mere days before my next travel. Life wont return to normal until much later in March, if at all—I’m not sure I want it to! ❦❦❦ In February, I did a thing that only …
What happened this month? I went to Toronto to visit friends: mission accomplished, it was lovely spending time together. Bonus mission: snowboarding! Blue mountain is small but adequate for just one day. It was cold! And very fluffy. These three days in Toronto were the prefix of a longer stay …
Stuff happens : I do not really set “goals” and so the topic of comparing “goals set” vs. “goals achieved” is somewhat non-sensical to me. One thing that does deserve attention, however, is how much 2024 was different from the years before that. It is said that life slows down with …
This month was somewhat more quiet. I spent quality time with friends, and started to work on a side quest in my home: setting up a reading corner. I’ve noticed that I have become more sensitive to my surroundings: the bed is for sleeping, the couch is for relaxing …
Am I lying to myself? “My mission is to help others becoming a better version of themselves, often by helping them understand that perceived obstacles in their way simply vanish with a perspective shift.” Plausible? yes. Definitely descriptive, in hindsight , of most of my endeavours over the last 20 years …
This month, I spent quality time with friends and past coworkers in NYC . I felt some anticipation beforehand, excited during my stay, and hopeful/relieved on my last day there. (More on this below.) I also had a few friends for dinner (multiple times) and it is feeling more and …
Two weeks from now I will be in New York, first attending a wedding and then visiting a few friends. If you would like to meet then, let me know! There are a few news items I would like to share for this month. ❦❦❦ The first one, definitely at the …
When I complained to my life coach, at the end of July, that I was finding it hard to follow the weekly structured schedule I had set up in June, even though I had felt engaged and motivated by it at the beginning, he pointed out that I had been …
This month’s update is coming a little bit early because I will be traveling next week, quite possibly without a laptop. Some personal un-fun news to get out of the way first: I have inflamed tendons inside both shoulders since my travel to the US last month, such that …
Networking is hard. Here’s the challenge. A structured event (say, a workshop, a lecture, a concert) is not great for networking. Good networking happens when the participants can “choose their own adventure” and connect to each other in creative ways, and spend quality time doing so—without too many …