Still Alive   

Is this thing on?

Appears so. Boy, what a year, huh?

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TIL 31: Puppies   

Today I learned, officially, that I was a much, much younger man when we adopted our old dogs. This puppy is a lot to keep up with!

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 30: Dog People   

Today I learned that if you’re a dog person, the house just doesn’t quite feel right without a dog. And, should you happen upon a dog, you are basically powerless. We we went to the hardware store for furnace air filters and they just happened to be having an adoption event with Second Chance, a local shelter.

We we came home with furnace filters, of course, and also a little lady we are calling Gunnison. She is a border collie/Newfoundland mix. Oh my, what have we gotten ourselves into?

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 29: Analysis   

Learned a lot about some specifics of a work process that makes up a big part of a project I’m working on.

I don’t love having these obtuse TILs; it’s a consequence of my work not being so public, but that work nonetheless is a big part of what I do daily, so it’s natural that a lot of things I learn come from it. That makes it hard to reflect on them in this forum, sort of un-satisfying.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 28: Jury Duty   

Today I learned quite a few ins and outs of a grand jury, because I have been called to sit on one weekly for the next few months. This will be interesting.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 27: My Job   

Some discussions the last few days but particularly today clarified part of my evolving job role. I’m used to being a doer, but lately a good chunk of my commitments are around facilitating: helping others do things well, helping build a strategy in which other projects will fit, and connect a lot of organizational dots. Don’t get me wrong, there are still a lot of deliverableswith my name on them; I need to exercise some agency and planning to find the right balance, for me, between making things and supporting others in doing the same. That’s an interesting, exciting challenge.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 26: Routines and Goodbyes   

So. Tonight I learned that a strong part of my routine brain will remind me to take the dog outside when returning home late in the evening, even when I am coming home from taking the old girl for her last trip to the vet, where we peacefully put her to sleep at the age of fifteen.

My wife was the same: she promptly refilled her water dish when we got home. Longtime habits don’t go easily I guess. For the first time in many years we don’t have dog footsteps tracking around the kitchen.

This makes two old girls we have said goodbye to in the past few months.

So. Dammit.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 25: Learning and Doing   

Some of these daily things I learn are not so much new lessons as things I observe that I would like to take forward.

Today didn’t feel productive at work. It didn’t start as well as I like, and never got back on the right foot. I need to develop some better ways to come back from those unsatisfying and un-energizing starts. When I encounter this kind of day my best response is to start identifying and ticking off small, doable bits of work, but today I wasn’t quite organized enough to pull even that off. So I need to work on that, to notice when I’m not focused and be deliberate about getting myself back at it. Tomorrow is another day to do it.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 24: Gluten Free Pizza   

Today I learned that when the recipe says to press the gluten free pizza dough out very thin, it means it. This recipe tasted good but I made the pizza a little thick so it came out a bit doughy in the middle. I’ll try it again!

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 23: 1000 Yard Stare   

I’m playing a lot of Destiny lately, and today went adventuring on my first strike playlist. This is a shorthand for a set of hard missions the game sets up for a set of players. I have been reluctant to go on these missions because I’m sort of an asocial social gamer, but really enjoyed the games we played thorough, me and two other strangers. Getting over my initial anxiety about the multiplayer matchmaking was good for me and produced some fun times.

Also, I picked up a great bit of loot on the run, and learned that the so-called 1000-yard state special weapon really is all that.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 23: Dating   

It’s never too late to take your spouse out on a date. We had a nice time tonight at one of our favorite places in town, where they always make a pretty good Manhattan, and in an hour or so we can catch up with one another while our boy plays with the neighbors. Babysitting co-op is a pretty good idea, gang.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 22: Allergies Suck   

Today I read this study about emotional and mental health impacts of food allergies. It suggests that food allergies can result in depression and anxiety from youth through at least young adulthood. It’s one more difficult potential outcome of my son’s allergies that I will worry about.

Bonus Friday TIL: watching my son un-self-consciously poke his tongue out while drawing at the kitchen counter after school, is so so great.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 21: Progress & Cooperation   

Today I got confirmation that a small part of a plan I put together at work … Is going to work. This nicely advances a broader project in a concrete way and I’m pleased with that. As usual it took a bunch of conversations to get to this point and will require many more; I’m happy that it feels like a good collaboration right now.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 20: Copied   

Today I learned about a nice and functional clipboard manager for iOS: Copied. I used it several times today, including in writing up this quick post. Among its best features: it has a share sheet extension, so using it is nearly as easy in iOS as the native copy function. Good stuff.

#tinychallenges #

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#TIL 19: Life’s sometimes a journey   

I’m a hard person to travel with, I think, because once we’re on our way somewhere, it’s all destination for me: how quickly can we get there? That aphorism about how it’s not the destination but the journey? Mostly bogus.

Today I was conscientious about not rushing, and on the last day of our vacation we had a leisurely breakfast, a nice walk and an easy drive. So maybe I learned just a bit about relaxing today.

But dang I wish I was on vacation still.

Also, I learned that I can freehand a pretty adequate Hawkman mask for a five-year old superhero.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 18: Are you a vacationer or just a traveler?   

Learned a lot today about VACATION OWNERSHIP (in its substance as well as the deeply aspirational tools used to sell sell sell it), which learning was the price of our deeply discounted resort stay this week. Ninety minutes of my day? Sure. I’m still not ready to buy.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 17: Music   

Tonight I drove to the town where I went to grad school, saw two dear friends and a Josh Ritter concert.

We made it home at 1am — home in this case being Phoenix, where we are spending a few vacation days — and I thought for a few minutes about what I learned today — okay, officially, yesterday, because I could barely see straight anymore at that point. This is what I wrote down for myself:

Endlessly supportive wife; I am a particular kind of music listener; I can still get lost in a performance; I am utterly transported by some. Few things meet my anticipation and excitement but today did.

What’s the thing I learned there? I don’t know, exactly. But something about the right experiences and futures being out there and I should overcome my reluctance to set my sights on them. Sure, a couple of days of vacation going well is different than a multi-yearlong project meeting a vision of success; but don’t they all start with starting? So I’m going to keep on trying to do that.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 16 TIL is Hard   

I’m on the road for a short bit of vacation, and had a thoroughly nice day that started with a great workout in my home town and ended with a late stroll back to the hotel with my wife after dinner in cool weather (but not the wintry cold and snowy weather at home!). A day like today it’s hard to pause and reflect much, even though I had good conversations and listened to some podcasts I enjoy and appreciate. I suppose today’s TIL is that it’s hard to make this time, but it’s valuable… Even if the outcome is just a realization that I’m working at it and some days come with more challenge than others.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 15: Bitcoin Fail   

Today I read up on the state of Bitcoin via this article by Mike Hearn. My PhD work was on alternative physical local currencies, so I’ve always been interested in Bitcoin as another kind of effort to build a medium of exchange. The apparently now-unsolvable technical issues underpinning Bitcoin, combined with failure of its community to address them when it could, is a pretty strong lesson in the organization of collective action. Money is hard, gang.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 14: Gymnastics   

Today I saw just how proud and lit up my son’s face is when he comes back from the floor at his preschooler gymnastics class.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 13: Learning at work   

It’s tough to write here about things I learn at work; I’m intentionally oblique about my work so as to keep a clear distinction. But I spend a lot of time there, so many of the things I’m finding in this month of daily learning challenges naturally come at the office.

Today’s TIL: I reached out to actively pursue some relationship building, and it felt successful. I need to do that more.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 12: Bowie   

It feels like I’m learning and thinking a lot about goodbyes lately. I spent a good chunk of yesterday in my headphones listening to David Bowie, sort of absorbing a lot of sound as well as the tributes and memories that were filling my Twitter stream.

Thing is, I’m not a big David Bowie fan. I like him and much of his music quite a lot, but I don’t know it or feel like I know him the way I know my favorite artists. But listening and reading through the day was sort of profound. I don’t think I had appreciated his impact.

I continued to process this all today, and listened to an impromptu episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour discussing him and the remarkable way he controlled his artistry, literally to his final hours. It’s striking and I will be learning from it for a long time.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 11: New Tool   

Today I started learning the ins and outs of a new application at The Job. I’m part of the team driving the implemenation of this thing, and this is my first time digging in to the configuration enough to start getting a really good mental picture of how all its pieces work together.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 10: Miles of Cables   

Today we disassembled all the components of our TV and media center, moved a new cabinet into place, and then put everything back together.

There are a lot of cables. Also, that reassembly will always take twice as long as I estimate it will take.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 09: Goodbyes   

There’s a bagel shop in town, Biff’s, whose walls are covered with framed photos of dogs — pets who have passed on. We’ve gone there for years, and my routine on most Saturdays is to work out in the morning and go for breakfast afterwards.

In October, our dog Uinta tripped and broke her leg. She was sixteen and a half years old, and I’ve had her since she was a puppy. She was very frail, and we made a hard decision to let her go rather than put her through a surgery and painful and confusing recovery. Last week I brought a framed picture of her to the bagel shop and offered it to the woman at the counter, after I had my breakfast.

Today her picture is up on the wall, surrounded by hundreds of other beloved and fondly remembered pets. Holding tears, I asked one of the owners for a moment to talk, thanked her for making a special place for these animals whose short lives sometimes inexplicably and surprisingly become a part of hearts. Then I went and cried in the car for a few minutes.

So today I learned a small bit of just how hard it is to really say goodbye.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 07: Snow Days   

Today’s #TIL is that on snow days I can get a surprising amount of work done by getting up at 5am to power through some things before everybody else’s day really gets started. Of course it throws off my exercise schedule, but it’s not too bad. I’m also hugely fortunate that on weeks like this (third day in a row of school closures…) I can be flexible without fear of losing my job and pay. That’s another repeat lesson, really, and reminds me to taker some deep breaths when the district closes schools again, anticipating six more inches of snow, and we get just a dusting. Ack.

Gotta shovel the roof a little, too.

#tinychallenges #

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#TIL 08: Imagination   

Today I learned just a bit of the tremendous imagination bubbling in my son’s head. It’s wonderful to watch him play, listen to the stories he tells himself, and watch him draw pictures of what he imagines.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 07: Snow Days   

On snow days I can get a surprising amount of work done by getting up at 5am to power through some things before everybody else’s day really gets started. Of course it throws off my exercise schedule, but it’s not too bad. I’m also hugely fortunate that on weeks like this (third day in a row of school closures due to snow…) I can be flexible without fear of losing my job and pay. That’s another repeat lesson, really, and reminds me to take some deep breaths when the district closes schools again, anticipating six more inches of snow, and we get just a dusting.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 06: Shrinkage   

Today I learned just how much a wool hat will shrink when put through the dryer. Pro tip: it’s a lot.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 05: Allies   

Here’s something I learn periodically, then forget and occasionally re-learn: I have a lot of allies at work, but I need to remember to engage them. As a pretty introverted person who is also very much a processor who needs time to think through things before leaping into action, I don’t always look for the help that I sometimes need. But invariably, when I do reach out, I not only get the feedback that I’m looking for, but am invigorated by the interaction. That’s something to remember, perhaps so I don’t have to keep learning it.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 04: Bedtime   

Today I learned that a five year-old who got used to staying up a little later and sleeping in during his winter vacation is hard to rouse early on the first day back to school. But, when the time comes, he’s ready for bed that night!

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 03: Star Wars Smile   

The grin on my son’s face, watching Star Wars (IV) for his first time, that first time X-Wings take off, is pure magic.

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 02: Forza Teaches Numbers   

This isn’t a particularly profound TIL day. I did have a rather moving experience from which I’m taking some lessons, but I’m not quite ready to say I’ve learned it yet.

So today’s TIL is: I am secretly teaching my five year old son to count using Forza on the XBox. He’s watching me race, calling out my position, and telling me what position I’ll be in after I pass the car ahead of me. That’s pretty cool.

(Also, this is a fun and gorgeous game.)

#tinychallenges

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#TIL 01: Thirty-two Thousand Feet Elevation   

According to Strava, my mountain biking climb total in 2015 was 32,408 ft, and the largest single ride climb I made was 2600 feet, on Fathers Day. That sets a pretty good goal to beat in 2016, I think.

This is among the information from my years’ worth of exercise numbers. I wrote a year ago about how taking on a regular workout routine was one of the best things I started in 2014. Well, I continued in 2015, and added a lot of biking to the mix as well. It was invigorating to feel stronger and stronger as I went through the year.

Among the other numbers from my year in exercise: 36 spin sessions for an estimated 27,000 cals burned while trying my best to beat up the spin bike. I did 127 gym workouts, many of which I could never have done when my shoulders were hurt (also learned throughout the year that I can still way overdo it; so I focus on challenge by choice, or being very conscientious about how hard I’m working and making sure that’s the right level that I want to push — not surprising, this applies to lots of things beyond just exercise). It feels really, really good.

So let’s do it, 2016.

#tinychallenges

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Slow, Small Data   

Via this writeup in Fast Company, Dear Data is such a cool project. Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec are spending a year exchanging a postcard per week, in which they each draw a representation of a specific behavior or facet of their lives. The front side of the postcard is the drawing itself, and the back side describes how to read the visualization.

Both images by Giorgia Lupi from “Week 38: A Week of Negative Thoughts“

One of the things that really makes me love this is the intentionality and immediacy of it. I used Reporter for several months, but fell away from it; it started to feel like something that would add value someday, but in an undefined way that didn’t keep me with it. By contrast, Stefanie and Giorgia are deciding on something very particular, measuring it and then drawing it all within about a week. Unlike so much “big data” they aren’t looking for a long-term pattern or a huge number of observations. Their illustrations are colorful and capture sparks of their personality while describing whatever they chose to measure; and the differences between their drawings are a reminder of the many ways to tell a story with a common theme.

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Restarting the iCloud Photos Sync   

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed that my iPhone photos weren’t syncing as expected to my MacBook, and therefore not being picked up by Photostream2Lightroom and pulled into my library.

Well, thanks to google and this writeup by Igor I’ve found the answer: A quick restart of the sync process appears to have taken care of the issue.

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Plerd, a Dropbox-hooked static blog builder   

Via Karen Cravens’ tilde club site I came across Plerd (and then Jason McIntosh’s set of super cool projects). Plerd looks cool, and seeing a tool similar to the one I use makes me want to clean up my own system and share it.

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How Invisible, Inc. Gets It Right   

This analysis by Robert Yang hits so much of what makes Invisible, Inc. a great stealth game.

You can always lose more. Unlike every other stealth game, slow and patient observation usually means slowly suffocating death here.

Incapacitating many guards the first time is easy; but they wake up again! You have to carefully time using your stun guns because they recharge slowly over several turns. Likewise, taking enemies out for good is hard and expensive, because you may never again get more ammo for that gun (if you even have something that’s effective against their armor).

Because guards are rarely actually out of the game, every turn puts you in more danger of being overwhelmed, caught without the resources to get to your goal. It’s a constant struggle between pushing just a bit further and getting in way, way over your head.

Robert’s description of a perfectly-laid out plan foiled by one tiny unexpected detail is basically the game in a nutshell: Flashes of “I’m brilliant!” colliding with “OH NO!” and it’s a great, great time. #

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At Rock Paper Shotgun: The 50 Best PC RPGs   

I love the big game lists that Rock Paper Shotgun puts together, and this massive list of RPGs is a fine example of the form. Baldur’s Gate II, FTL, Dungeon Master I mean Legend of Grimrock, Eye of the Beholder, Ultima VII, Pool of Radiance … the list goes on, with references to good contemporaries to the classics.

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Apple Music, so Far   

Looks like my pre-release Apple Music thoughts are mostly bust: No API so far, no good last.fm connection, no clear way to migrate existing playlists from other services such as Rdio.

And there’s more it doesn’t have, like any kind of coherent cross-device connectivity: No way to listen on the iPhone, then pick up the same playlist or album when I get home and open up my MacBook. The ‘Recently Played’ smart playlist occurred to me to be one way to get to this information, but it’s unreliable, usually omitting about seventy-five percent of the tracks I have listened to. This is honestly really puzzling, and frustrating, especially given Apple’s emphasis on hand-off between devices. Perhaps the recently played list only shows those tracks that are in my own, actual catalog? If so, I’m even more confused about how to think about “my” music versus the service’s catalog. It’s supposed to make that distinction irrelevant, but it seems to emphasize it in unpredictable places.

There are also some interface issues. This is a clicky, clicky application. (Rdio, which has become somewhat inscrutable sometimes, is so much cleaner.)

So why keep using it, when Rdio continues to behave the way I much prefer? Well, a couple of things: First, the curated playlists are good. They are well-titled, have useful descriptions, and the ones that show up in my ๐Ÿ’“ “for you” section are a pretty good match for my tastes. This is in contrast to everything algorithmic that I’ve ever tried, which just never felt right to me. I have been enjoying listening to them a lot.

Capturing this discovery, on the other hand, is tricky: Whereas when I have a last.fm connection going, and can return to the day’s plays and easily flag something that I loved, with Apple Music, if I don’t capture that right in the moment, I’m much more likely to lose it.

Also, Siri integration is slick. I mean, really cool. Driving in the car, I can just tell my phone to play me an album or a song, or a playlist. This has made impulse listening so easy and fun. And when my son requests his current favorite song from the backseat, I can just tell Siri to play it, no fumbling through playlists and menus to get to it. (On the other hand, he will quickly understand that I can no longer use “Dad’s driving, son, I can’t find ‘Fireproof’ for you right now.”)

Finally, I really like the unification of my own library with the Apple Music catalog. While I continue to share the feeling that it’s often unclear what the status of my own music is ², it’s great to be able to can mix something from my home catalog with a playlist from Apple Music when I’m out with my iPhone. Another benefit of this integration is that I’m listening to my own old playlists from iTunes once again. There are tracks there that I haven’t listened to in years, and my only excuse is that iTunes became such a bloated and byzantine mess that I tried as much as possible to avoid it. Now that they show up in Apple Music, I am really, truly enjoying them.

I think Apple has done something very smart with the long free trial of the service. If they iterate quickly on some of the interface details and expand on the cross-device support, during this time when they service is still free, I think they’ll have something competitive and compelling. I hope that they do, because there’s a lot here to like, but I’m not turning over my keys to Rdio just yet.

Oh, one more thing: I didn’t like the “play blah blah in Apple Music” cruft that the app adds to a URL that you share from it, so I made a quick and dirty Workflow share extension that copies a track, playlist, or album URL to the clipboard. Here it is.

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Adventures   

I don’t remember how I came across Zen on Dirt, but I love reading these travelogue adventure accounts. Don’t miss the Continental Divide Trail epic.

Wanderlust. #

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A couple more Apple Music notes   

Last year I made a few totally uninformed notes about Apple’s purchase of Beats, which we now know is resulting in the upcoming Apple Music – a curated, streaming radio and music streaming service that looks functionally (so far) a lot like Rdio and Spotify.

I use Rdio a lot, and I was thinking while I was driving around this morning about a couple of things that I hope Apple Music eventually will offer. The first is a hook to last.fm to scrobble the songs I listen to. Last.fm has continued to be one of those services that I just keep using. I like being able to gets its view of my musical history, and I’ve also connected it to slogger, so I have an ongoing log in my Day One journal. I would miss not having that ongoing record.

Here’s the important one, though: Apple needs to realize, especially with their intent to launch an Android app, that their target customers are already using a streaming service, and they have to help them cross the river. They need to carefully consider the maturity of services that they’re competing with: If a Spotify friend posts a playlist, I can use re/spin to build the same playlist in Rdio. And if I’m to migrate outright from Rdio, how will Apple help me move my playlists, favorites, and collections? I hope for an API, because that will also help me get my last.fm hook. I guess we’ll have some idea in a few days. Fingers crossed.

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What to wear for the apocalypse   

I love this Metafoundry piece about the effect of supply chain and manufacturing loss on post-apocalytic clothing:

No supply chain means that, at least in the short term, the local clothing stocks will be a major determinant of what people wear. Where I live (the northeast US), that means cheap and ubiquitous t-shirts patchworked into everything, for a start–making quilts out of a hundred thousand unneeded t-shirts. Notions (zippers, hooks, buttons etc.) will be cannibalized from worn-out clothes–even cheap zippers bring together out-of-reach precision metallurgy and polymers, and reliable YKK zippers will be sought and prized. Speaking of polymers: Patagonia and North Face and Gore-Tex outerwear will be prized heirlooms, the most valuable garments made of durable, functional and irreplaceable technical synthetics (especially needful in New England winters). No supply chains means no polymers, nor much by way of dyes (most of which are derived from petroleum), which means returning to fibres that can be grown (and grown locally, initially). Plants or animal products like wool, as well as leather (probably not black, though) and fur. This was nicely captured in Mad Max: Fury Road: the Vuvalini of Many Mothers, who gardened, wore handwoven-looking scarves and fabrics in colours consistent with vegetable dyes.

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Can’t Talk Now, Playing Splatoon   

This is the most fun I’ve had on the Internet in some time.

Seriously, lots of fun. #

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Invisible, Inc., and Roguelikes   

Three Moves Ahead has had a couple of shows lately that I’ve really enjoyed. First up was their interview with some of the crew from Klei, makers of Invisible, Inc. and previously of Mark of the Ninja. I really loved Mark of the Ninja, and when I heard this interview I couldn’t resist picking up Invisible, Inc., too.

It’s so great: Turn-based stealth that combines the isometric X-COM perspective and some of its combat elements with bits of the turn-by-turn dynamics of Frozen Synapse and the push your luck action of FTL. Which isn’t to say it feels derivative; it just uses some familiar elements in such a great, fun way.

Also, it’s a tiny bit forgiving, at least while you learn the ropes, unlike FTL or Frozen Synapse: On the beginning difficulty level, you have five “rewinds” that you can use to back up to the beginning of the previous turn, and they come in so handy when you misplan, lose two agents in one round, and need to back up and think about What You’ve Learned.

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Snow in May   

After a very dry winter, we’ve had cold weather and repeated rounds of snow and rain this month, enough that this May looks to go on record as the 10th wettest in Flagstaff weather history. I complain a little, because I want to ride my bike and sit on the porch, but we do need the moisture. It makes for a spectacular scene, too. Also, I love the view from my twelve-minute commute. (This is when I don’t ride my bike to work.)

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Wunderlist API + Alfred = Cool   

Wunderlist is a super application and my wife and I use it for almost everything list-like. But I don’t love adding items to lists using the web app’s interface: I want something non-clicky that I can capture items to from anywhere. So I was quite happy to find that they offer a developer API!

Getting a developer account and openauth key for your own sample application is easy, and with a little tinkering I put together a pair of Alfred workflows for adding items to my inbox and grocery lists.

I’d like to improve on the workflow so that it can call an external config file or shell variable instead of having the auth key hardcoded in the workflow as it is now; that will let me share the thing as a package, too. Meanwhile, if you want to try this out, you’ll need your own developer account and sample application with authorization key from Wunderlist. Then you can make an Alfred workflow that runs the following in bash (insert your own CLIENTKEY, ACCESSTOKEN, and LISTID):

curl -s -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H 'X-Client-ID: CLIENTKEY' -H 'X-Access-Token: ACCESSTOKEN' -d '{"title":"{query}","list_id":LISTID}' -X POST 'https://a.wunderlist.com/api/v1/tasks'

Pretty sweet.

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Jess Zimmerman stole a pen from Douglas Adams’ grave   

She writes about Adams on the 14th anniversary of his death:

I was honest about one thing, at least: I don’t use that pen for anything besides fiction. I’m not the type of person who collects memorabilia: I lent my signed Mostly Harmless to a friend in high school and never got it back and never really minded. My copies of most of his books are in shambles, read to shreds. But I’m precious about that pen. It won’t be used to write a shopping list while I’m alive. The artifacts of reading are comfortable, disposable; the artifacts of writing are amulets and alchemist’s tools.

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