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I Like That the Boat Is Stuck
I know it's bad that the boat is stuck, but I like that the boat is stuck.
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Ten Years of Logging My Life
I've been continuously recording my daily activities by hand since I was 17, amounting to 85,000+ activities over the span of a decade.
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Early-Retirement Update
I’ve had a difficult time finding a way to create a new entry on a blog that has essentially been dead since 2015. Yet, I have had a persistent feeling that I owe my readers an update.
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The art of not taking things personally
Why other people’s emotions might not be about you — and your emotions might not be about them
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The code worked differently when the moon was full
I love a good bug, especially ones that are initially hard to explain but then ...
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The Invention of a New Pasta Shape
For the past three years, Dan Pashman of The Sporkful podcast has been on something of a mission: to invent a new pasta shape. All of Pashman’s hard work has pa
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Avoid News, Part 2: What the Stock Market Taught Me about News
It’s been a decade since I blogged about the benefits of avoiding news. In that time I mostly followed the advice I gave. I kicked my addiction to The Daily Show in late 2016 after it switche…
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How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)
John Wooden died in 2009. But if you’re a basketball coach today, you’re still living in his shadow.
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Reasons to Quit Social Media
You either use social media, or you're used by these insidious platforms. Here are 20 reasons to quit social media.
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Reflections on 10k Hours of Programming
I'm certainly not a world-class expert, but I have put my 10,000 hours of deliberate practice into programming. Here are 31 of my reflections on programming.
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Building a vision of life without work (2015)
The number one question that people ask once you tell them you’re considering early retirement is: What will you do with your time?
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Work Hard (2007)
Every mathematician worthy of the name has experienced … the state of lucid exaltation in which one thought succeeds another as if miraculously… this feeling may last for hours at a tim…
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You don’t need to work on hard problems (2020)
A lot of smart college students end up with the idea that “solving hard technical problems” is the best thing they can do with their life—probably because that’s the only thing they’ve ever been rewarded for so far.
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Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice
What tacit knowledge is, and why it is the most interesting topic in the study of expertise today.
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How to Learn Stuff Quickly
As software developers, we're always learning new things; it's practically the whole gig! If we can learn to quickly pick up new languages/frameworks/tools, we'll become so much more effective at our job. It's sort of a superpower.
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We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus
Yet another calm weekend after months of lockdowns and I sit down to enjoy a book. After turning a couple of pages, I'm no longer able to keep going. In-between, I've managed to look at my phone four times and I've had my thoughts wander away. Why does something so simple feel suddenly so difficult?
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To learn a new language, read its standard library
The best way to learn a new programming language, just like a human language, is from example. To learn how to write code you first need to read someone else’s code. But who is the best person to learn from? Which code should we read? Where should we look to find it?
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I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)
A note from the author This is an older version of this story, from 2007. Here's the latest version, from 2022. Tim already had his bag and overcoat on and his keys in his hand and was about to leave when Diane stopped him at the door. "I just got this thing working....
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Timezone Bullshit
People often use short timezone abbreviations like EST and PST to refer to timezones. If you're doing this in a computer program, you are almost certainly making a huge mistake. Let's take take a look, using the disastrously bad unix libc timezone tools , which you're almost certainly using under the hood if you're…
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What it's like to be cancelled
An honest look at what it looks like to be cancelled, one year after it happened. A hopeful yet realistic message for everyone.
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There are six internet links on my office on wheels—seven when Starlink arrives
If you are going to work remotely anywhere in Australia from a van, you need damn good internet. Here's how I put together a vehicle with the best internet connectivity in Australia.
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It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate
I’ve spent nearly twenty years blogging, giving talks and releasing open source code. It’s been fantastic for my career, and a huge amount of work. But here’s a useful secret: …