Recently, I came across a few old and new interviews of Donald Knuth (sources: (i) Companion to the Papers of Donald Knuth , (ii) Interviews conducted by Lex Fridman Part 1 and Part 2 ), where he sheds light on his work habits, how he approaches problems, and his philosophy towards happiness. I really enjoyed reading…
Shuzo Fujimoto’s five self-published books: Solid Origami, Invitation to Creative Playing with Origami, and Twist Origami 1-3 Yesterday, during an online event dedicated to Shuzo Fujimoto, I was happy to announce that his children, Hitoshi Fujimoto and Shumi Okada, being his heirs, have agreed to release his five…
I like watching videos. A lot in fact. Today, I've spent over 6 hours watching youtube videos, an hour of reading through comments[1] on hacker news, 3 hours...
If you’re feeling creative, do the errands tomorrow. If you’re fit and healthy, take a day to go surfing. When inspiration strikes, write it down. The calendar belongs to everyone else.…
Working in tech, I've observed developers who work as hard as possible when they don't need to. I’m here today to tell you that it's a bad idea and you shouldn't do it.
Back in college, they told me that I would start my career writing code, but eventually, I would move to a position where I would ask others to code my designs. To celebrate that this turned out to be completely false, here are some assorted reflections as a 40-year-old programmer that looks back: • Compared to my…
A mysterious voice is moaning and grunting on American Airlines' in-flight announcement systems, and nobody knows who or how they're doing it.
A way out from the perfectionism trap
Which is good! Boring = success
Or "Spiderman Is My Boyfriend"
File this under highly speculative. I’m sure there is better research on this topic than this writing This past week, for no obvious reason,...
In the aggressive pursuit of expanding ad revenue, Apple is gambling with one of its core values: great products.
This is one of the lessons that every writer comes to appreciate: writing is thinking. Writing is not the artifact of thinking, it’s the actual thinking process. There’s no shortage of great quotes on this topic, the implications are less clear: Writing is the planning process and the final product: You don’t design a…
Pay more attention to people who are just a little bit ahead of you
It took far too long for it to click in my brain that I was stuck. There was no career path. Sure my title changed, pay went up, but my day-to-day never changed. I was so busy collaborating with dozens of people across all departments, that it felt like I was growing. I wasn’t.
I am running for Corvallis City Council again this fall! Campaign site is here .
Home is an invention on which no one has yet improved. Ann Douglas A lot of people dream of building a modern home. Or rather, a lot of people dream of living in a modern home. A place of their own, with the people they love, surrounded by functional beauty
I like plain text. I also like doodling while I write. Some things are just easier to explain with a picture. But if I need to draw a picture today, I need to stop writing plain text, pick an app, dismiss a couple of dialogs or tours of new features in front of my face, think about all the ways it's acting for its…
You’re one among millions, not one in a million.
As of today, I've been using the same Arch Linux installation for ten years on my main computer. I don't have much to say, but I'm writing this because my experience doesn't match the common notion that Arch Linux is unstable. 1
In 1978, Brian Eno released Ambient 1: Music for Airports, a landmark album in ambient and electronic music. Although it wasn't the first ambient
Trashing legacy software is fun. It creates camaraderie.
Building a battery powered e-ink weather forecast display for our home. This was a fun Raspberry Pi project.
I built my own laptop over the holiday break and it’s a developer’s dream come true. I took a chance and ordered a Framework Laptop DIY Edition. I’m so glad I did. The Framework is an excellent platform to customize and build a very capable and stable Linux machine for development. Here’s what I love about it and…
