Life

TV Setup

I got a TV for the first time since 2001 and a couple friends asked me to explain the setup.

Return Statement

I’ve finished my time at Recurse Center, and a small tradition is to write a “return statement” about what you did in your time there.

Voicemail

Robots and elderly relatives have finally driven me to extreme measures. My voicemail greeting is now this “you have reached a number that has been disconnected” recording repeated for sixty seconds as a multi-pronged attack on voicemail:

Lobsters

⊕

Attending Recurse Center

I have been accepted to the Recurse Center to spend three months on collaborative, self-directed study of programming. I’m planning to continue studying Haskell and dependent types, proof assistants, and category theory. Maybe Coq, Idris, or TLA+ if I can find someone else interested.

Queue Zero

Almost exactly a year ago, I posted about Sizing Up My Queue to count up how much video and audio I had downloaded to watch. The final tally?

Peter Bhat Harkins

On the happy occasion of our marriage, my spouse and I have adopted the shared last name Bhat Harkins. (I’m also dropping my little-used middle name.) Please do us the favor of updating your contact lists and email clients, and we’ll get started on the exciting task of updating all the state agencies, businesses, and sites over the next few weeks. Thanks!

Will knowledge change a decision you make?

This is one of my favorite decision-making heuristics: Will knowledge change a decision you make?

Long-Term Travel Gear List2

Recently I was pontificating at Kori Roys, a coworker who's recently departed for some long-term travel, about what to bring and how to pack it. I gave him the highlights and promised to publish the full list. Well, that took enough time that he got under way --- because it's over 3,000 words. I had to put a fair amount of thought into traveling with just a small backpack, and I'm happy to share it now. Here’s my Long-term Travel Gear List. I'll be keeping it updated as I continue to tweak it, and I'll publish a new blog post if and when I feel significant changes warrant it.

Personal Workflow

For about a year I’ve been using Trello, a free web app for organizing notes, to track my personal to-do lists across various projects. I’ve used it to create the Well-Sorted Version (which included repeatedly proofing 600 pages of gibberish) and update NearbyGamers from Rails 2.1 to 3.2.13 (while moving it from a VPS to Heroku and from MySQL to Postgres — a yak-shaving marathon) while staying on top of daily chores and other life maintenance. For the first time I feel reliably productive and in control of the overwhelming procrastination that’s kept me from from finishing these and many other projects for years.

Backpack Criteria

I spent all of 2011 traveling through interesting cities in the U.S. and Canada with a small backpack. I put a lot of thought into what I needed, so I wanted to share that in case anyone else finds it useful.

Open and Closed Platforms

I keep having to explain why I don’t own a smartphone. There’s one big reason, but let me quickly run some other things that matter before I get to it.

The Dog That Didn't Bark

Silver Blaze is one of the most popular Sherlock Holmes stories, in part because (spoiler alert for a 118-year old story you can read by clicking that first link) the mystery is in part solved by Holmes recognizing that something didn’t happen:

Book Licenses

One downside to the web being interactive is that it can turn everyday activities into legal agreements. If you bought or were given a manual for an ARM processor you could do what you like with it. But if you read one online, you’re entering into a license to give up your right to fair use quoting or to use it for all purposes (specifically, looking for patent infringement).

Twitter

I’ve starting using Twitter as @pushcx. I’ve been reading a few people for a while, but not really contributing.

Investing in Cloud Computing

A friend forwarded me an sales email he received from The Motley Fool about why “cloud computing” was poised to disrupt to the market. I ranted a bit, but I think there are some things worth considering.

Travels of Indefinite Duration

Starting January 1st, 2011, I’m going to do some traveling. I have definite plans out through March and will choose and plan new destinations as I go. I don’t have an end date in mind, I’m going to travel until I run out of interest in seeing the world.

Sample Camera Pictures

If you’re researching which camera to buy, you’re probably frustrated by trying to find sample pictures. Google hasn’t dealt well with spam on expensive products like cameras, so you’ll see a lot of splogs and shops hosting the same handful of example pictures from the manufacturer.

Camera Card

Three-step process for improving your life.

This is Not A Productivity Post

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Tracking Finances Though Benign Neglect

Amazingly, I’m not broke.

Finish a Project

The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.

Inbox Zero

A few minutes ago, for the first time in around a decade, I emptied my email inbox. I’ve been steadily whittling it down (or at least holding the line) for the last few months: catching up on mailing lists, responding to outstanding emails, admitting there’s some things that are so old I’m not going to respond to them, and moving work items onto a proper to-do list. So I have an impressively boring screenshot:

Serenity Green

Here’s a common question: Why doesn’t Joss Whedon’s Firefly have any Chinese people?

Authenticity

American culture has a big hang up for authenticity. Either something is or it isn’t. “Faker” or “wannabe” or “sell-out” are considered strong insults.

Moving is Rewriting

As I’m pulling my life back out of a hundred cardboard boxes and settling into a new place, I recognize a kinship between moving and rewriting code. You spend a lot of time and effort, you Do Things Right This Time, you expend resources, and you feel productive for how much you’ve done. And in the end, you’ve probably just got a few new features and you’ll find a few new problems after a couple weeks.

Picking a Username

I used the handle malaprop as my username on sites when I started doing stuff on the web, and it worked decently. Short, memorable, and almost always available. I got involved in Chicago programming communities and found a shortcoming: it often took weeks or months before someone connected my name and my handle. There weren’t any wacky sitcom hijinks, but it was confusing.

Oh Noes!

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Google Zombies

Google has hired a bunch of my friends and professional acquaintances, and I’ve met a few more from the growing Chicago office, and a number of them are zombies. Conversations run like this:

344 Books Must Go

Over the last couple years I’ve been reducing the amount of stuff I own*, and now it’s time for most of the books to go. I’m giving away 344 books, three-quarters of my book collection, free to any family, friend, or acquaintance for the asking. Really. If we’ve met or traded mail before now and we got along decently, I’ll give you free books for the asking, just click that link to see the books I’ve tagged “giveaway”.

Programming Is Like Sex

because...

It's, Like, Symbolic

In a nice coincidence (though I’ve been reading Robert Anton Wilson lately and am tempted to yell synchronicity), my music player gave me Flower by Liz Phair (the better version, from Girlysounds) and followed it up with Marigold by Nirvana. They’re both slow, quiet songs (and Flower has the added bonus of being delicously obscene).

Playing With Fire

I managed to iron twelve shirts without once burning myself on the iron, go me!

What a Blog Post is Missing

This 37signals blog post is missing one thing.

Newsflash: You're Not Good Enough

The excellent humorist Jay Pinkerton just wrote about Men's Health magazine. It's a lighthearted but wholly accurate look at a common magazine formula.

The first third of Men's Health, it turns out, is helpfully devoted to every single minor irk, itch or irritation you’ve experienced today, and why it’s cancer and is excited about killing you. Having trouble sleeping at night? Depression, and also probably diabetes. OR cancer.

Writing and Formatting

I just read a good post on Gadetopia about writing skills and had a small correction to offer. Go read it and come back (and read the two linked posts about Word and Frontpage use). I'll wait.

Specificity

I've always loved English's hyper-specific words like defenstrate (to throw something out of a window) and borborygm (a rumbling noise in the bowels). Something about them is deeply and indelibly funny.

Think Outside the Euclidean Universe

You've probably all seen the brain-teaser that's a perennial favorite with uncreative managers the world over. (Why an exercise in creative thinking is really only loved by incredibly boring people is a discussion beyond the scope of this blog post.)

Push cx

My first programming language was Hypercard (probably 2.0) in 6th grade in late 1991. A slight change of pace, my second programming language was x86 assembly and I have a small warm spot in my heart for it. I keep the small warm spot deep underneath the frozen lake of frustration I have in my heart for x86 asm.