Monthly recap: April 2023

Matterhorn, viewed from where we were staying in Zermatt

Major updates

A week in Switzerland

Zurich
Lucerne
Interlaken
- Jungfrau and Harder Klum
Zermatt
- Gornergrat
Glacier Express, then back to Zurich

Minor updates

AirBnB worked out well, two of these places
Cheese Fondue was a hit
A trip to the Tech Museum
Discovering San Mateo downtown
Playing around a lot with Midjourney

Watched/read/made/listened

This time, watched more downloaded Youtube videos than in-flight movies (!)
Watched Fellowship of the rings
Watched Pink Panther (2006?)
Finished audiobook of book 5 of Wings of Fire
Watched the latest series by Adam Curtis, Trauma Zone
Watched a great series on the work of Rene Girard
Re-watched Wallace and Gromit

Monthly Recap: March 2023

*Onion peel glimpsed through a (good) toy microscope*

Major updates

Gave up on trying to set up a Minecraft server and just went with a 2-person “Realm” instead — works well!
Opened one of birthday gifts late — a toy microscope, but still good enough to see detail in leaves etc

Minor updates

Dental adventures: finally got a crown for a previous implant
Annual medical check up: all good
School events
Wrapped up taxes
“Family burger time” at Counter
Visited the “Tech” museum with Tara: highly recommend (the previous “Children’s Discovery Museum” is boring for her now)

Watched/read/made/listened

Puss in Boots (“the last wish”: meh, but mostly funny)
Mysterious Benedict Society book two (started book three too, but that didn’t hold interest, so paused it)
Finally finished watching all Harry Potter movies (watched the 8th one)
Audio book: “Irreversible Damage” (good fyi for parents with daughters)
Pink Panther (the 2006 version with Steve Martin) … led to some classic cartoon watching, always good!

Monthly Recap: February 2023

*View of San Francisco from the Bay Bridge*

Major updates

Trip to Carmel where we stayed in an AirBnB in the woods

No internet: board games, reading, sleeping early
Fortunately got back in time before the storm closed the roads

Tara’s school was off for a week, went to a great camp by Peninsula Youth Theater — and put on a short play at the end (“The reluctant dragon”)

Minor updates

Visited Treasure Island (finally, after over a decade of living here) for a friend’s 40th birthday party
Slightly better eat/sleep 🤞
Saw a bunch of snow on the peaks
Got an annual medical check-up done after a few years’ break (all good)
Visited Michael’s after many years with Tara — it’s still around and still a “craft-y wonderland”

Watched/read/made/listened

Gosford Park (re-watched) — discovered the music of Ivor Novello
Read “Digital Minimalism” (plan to practice some of that this year)
Tried out a family board game: Dragonwood
Knives out (re-watched)
And then there were none (the old version!)

Monthly Curations: February 2023

Something truly novel for me, “reaching before and beyond spacetime” through deep learning
A long essay on the war in Ukraine. Goes against the grain but has a thorough overview of a lot that has been overlooked in the coverage over the last year
- Also, some plain talk on the war
Roam has been getting constant improvements, and it has joined my list of “forever tools”
A fun (niche) idea, the “Mouse Book Club”
Remembering the value of public education, a moving talk by Catherine Liu
In praise of small cameras
Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls (hard to read)
The broken state of open-source
Realized that people have built GPUs within Minecraft
Even crime organizations are doing tech layoffs (this one needs a comedy sketch)
Fascinating look at Forth

Monthly recap (January 2023)

Major updates

New year, new beginnings: joined a bunch of very interesting people doing very interesting work at Luminary Cloud

Minor updates

Dishwasher, dryer and a toilet all failed on one weekend and all had to be replaced; became a family fun event
On eating places nearby: bummed to find that Pastis closed down, mentally replaced it with La Boheme nearby. Also, discovered Fabrini’s as an alternative to Hobees
Cough/cold for a few days
Doing the Caltrain commute
A ridiculous amount of rain
Had a long library trip, and a very enjoyable at Tara’s school

Watched/read/made

Mitchells and the machines (I loved this — also had a good “technology lesson”)
Clue (the 1985 movie — surprisingly, Tara liked this too!)
Avatar (yes, watched it with 3-d in the hall)
Ivy & Bean (on Netflix … not a fan, the books are way better)
Wolfwalkers (enjoyable short animated film)
The Duke (one of those classic humorous/satirical/whimsical movies, highly recommend)

Monthly Curations: January 2023

On caring for abandoned strangers
On art as “the overcoming of death”
- Beauty in the philosophy of cosmism is not an aesthetic category, but an ontological one. Beauty is a measure of creation’s perfection, its spirituality, goodness, and fullness
- The protest against mortality, the hunger for immortality and resurrection, bestowed an initial impulse to human creativity. Fedorov remarks that it was out of a feeling of loss, out of protest against death that the first artistic monuments appeared
- (heavy stuff!)
A bizarre recent Air-India incident
On surviving headless
On bringing back personal blogging
Emacs is “not enough” (tough message, but all fans must encounter these limitations)
Looking at “Medley Interlisp”
A fun deep-dive into what happens as you type in the browser bar, in great detail
- (You’re guaranteed to learn something)
On “Winning and losing” with AI
Some more On Forth
Ambitious “rewrite the world” attempts are always commendable; “Project Mage” is one of these
An analysis of the recent Microsoft <-> OpenAI move
An insanely productive effort: a new C++ compiler (!)
- Another contender for a “C++ successor language”
Bacteria in your gut can talk to your brain — and “control you”
A fascinating look at steel-making
On holding on to concrete media

Monthly Curations: December 2022

*Lidar overlay showing a part of an extensive civilization in Guatemala*

LiDaR is the gift that keeps giving, in the dense forests of South America
It’s good to make things for fun
A reasonable overview of Urbit
On over-hyped claims and throwing around the word “wormhole”
Interesting historical tidbit: early Lisp had several “similar” languages that died out
Vaguely disturbing overview of “internet persons”
Looking at Gemini and other “web bloat” fixes
“The forty year programmer”
Evidence of a mega-tsunami on Mars.

Monthly Summary (December 2022)

Major updates

India trip to meet family
Decided to start at a new place post-Sigma

(will follow-up with a post with details on each)

Minor updates

Traded in my troublesome Subaru Outback for something new
Side trip to Agra, saw the Taj Mahal (!)
Some Urbit adventures
Ate a bunch of good food at a bunch of interesting places

Watched/read/made

Glass Onion (sequel to Knives Out)
Nope (watched this in the flight)
The Greatest Showman
Netflix: Troll, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Bullet Train
Disney+: Mysterious Benedict Society (season 2)
Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix (finished listening to audiobook with Tara)
Nightmare before Christmas (family re-watch)
Enola Holmes (part 2)

(a good month for viewing …)

Monthly recap (November 2022)

Major updates

Moving on from Sigma (more on this later)
Trip to Kauai
Tara’s birthday

Minor updates

Meeting various people, some after many years
Bunch of birthday parties
- Discovered the Palo Alto Junior Zoo this way, pretty fun place !!
Trip to Children’s Discovery Museum after a long time
- Realized it’s really for small kids
Trip to The Tech museum in San Jose
- Exceeded expectations (!)
Got a massage (note to self: should do this monthly, at least)

Watched/read/made

Couple of side projects
Discovered a great series we all watched together: The Mysterious Benedict Society
Finished Abbott Elementary (Hulu)
Finished listening to audiobook of Plato’s Republic
Finished listening to Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix with Tara (long, over 27 hours!)

Monthly Curations — November 2022

A new space station lives!
Looking at structures found in the Azores
A stock-sentiment-tracking service built on Lisp
Great old forth blog (from about 15 years ago!)
Haven’t had “an Octopus post” in a while:
- here’s them throwing things at each other (pic above)
- and an explanation for their brain complexity that suggests a possible common factor for all complex brains: an expansion in the variety of microRNA
The right “introduction curve” for Kubernetes (hint: don’t)
“Tools for Thought” as medium, as computation, as cultural practice, as memory aid.
Remembering Erik Naggum
A level-headed assessment of blockchain technology
On the difficult market for developer tools
A psychedelic take on generative AIs
Getting romantic about the craft of programming 🙂
A short, tragi-comic account of GNU/FSF
A range of Lisp typography (!)
An interesting science vs religion take
A provocative talk by Peter Thiel
A review of “non-C-based” operating systems
On the “pursuit of beauty” (in mathematics) … and the costs of doing so