I started keeping a list of books I read back in January 1996, over twenty-five years ago. As of today, there are 1,063 books on the list. I have a simple rule for how a book gets on the list: I have to finish it. If I re-read a book, which I occasionally do, it…
Author’s Note: This essay is the second in a series on how I learned to write code. You may want to check out Part 1 if you haven’t already done so. By the time I got my VIC-20, the computer was already outdated, but I wasn’t complaining. There was only one problem: I didn’t know…
What is the difference between a diary and journal? I can’t find much of a difference in how the terms are used. They seem interchangeable, but that only means that somewhere on the Internet, a big flame war exists over the subtle differences between these terms. Accord to Merriam-Webster, a diary is “a record of…
Of the many ridiculous marketing schemes foisted upon us, the concept of “pre-registration” has to be among the most redundant. This occurred to me after I received a weekly notification from my county reminding me that I am, in fact, pre-registered for my COVID vaccine, and that I would be notified with instructions once registration…
I don’t know about you, but as I get older my brain seems to burn out more quickly than it used to. Or, maybe it’s not age, but stretching my ability to comprehend the stuff that I work on. I’ve been working on developing a fairly complex software system in the day job, and so…
There are 25,766 photos in my digital photo library. On seeing that number recently, I longed for the days of film cameras with 24- and 36-roll clips of film. Back then, if you wanted to take a picture, you needed to make sure it was worth one of those 24 exposures. Now, it seems, I…
Once I got the hang of how Obsidian worked for me, once I realized the power of its linking capabilities, and that it really did everything I wanted a note-taking app to do, it was natural to consider what could go into my vault. Daily notes were a given, of course. All of my reading…
Recently, I passed a personal milestone. It is an arbitrary milestone, one for which I am the sole judge, but it is one that has been 37 years in the making. I have been a professional developer (coder) for about 27 years now. In that time, I’ve generally had no problem considering myself a professional.…
I spent the weekend traveling the world, an event I had been training for my entire life. That training was inspired by–although I didn’t know it at the time–a talk with my mom when I was 5 or 6 years old, about the value of books. “Books can take you anywhere,” I remember her telling…
Steve Martin’s L.A. Story is one of my favorite movies. I thought it first debuted 30 years ago this summer, but it turns out, it was first released on February 8, 1991, so it now just over 30 years old. I saw the movie for the first time with my brother and distinctly recall the…