What a delight. Musical instruments exist at an intersection of craftsmanship and engineering, and this competition gives an outlet to people who want to travel to the far reaches of those axes. It asks wonderfully inventive wackos to build fun and genuinely new instruments that they also need to be able to play. As a percussionist who has always been delighted by ratchets and vibraslaps, and was enthralled by a theramin in high school, the finals for this competition will now be on my radar as a ridiculous excuse for a quick trip to Atlanta.

I enjoy hosting trivia, and have now done so twice over Zoom for a core group of friends back in San Francisco. I thought I had shared the first batch on here back in 2024, but evidently not. So, here are both rounds, obviously geared towards my interests and inside jokes among these friends. They are provided as slideshows without the answers, so test yourself and have fun. November 2024 ...

Core to my effort to improve this blog and my writing more generally is a better revision process. I now use tools to catch mechanical errors or to point out when I’ve slipped into passive voice accidentally, but that doesn’t address the flow of prose, the feel of the words washing over the reader. Reading out loud is a superb way to improve, but I’m not always in a position to do that. ...

We were lucky to see Lisbon during a “coastal event”, as our weather apps described the inclement system to us. Serpentine cobblestone streets glistened in the aftermath of an afternoon shower, the sun that much more appreciated for the damp and cold that threatened our plans. Wicked gusts whipped through the narrow, curving streets and pinch points like someone testing for leaks in the plumbing, a few catching us head-on as we headed uphill. All of this added to the character of our visit and further reminded us of San Francisco, a familiar city with its own set of hills and odd streets, cable cars and coffee shops and eccentricities. San Francisco also has a cool tower, though Lisbon has a thousand-year-old castle. Parallels abound, except for Lisbon’s lack of parallel streets. I won’t further debase Lisbon by comparing it to a city so far its junior. ...

I last edited this draft back in 2020. I vaguely recall wanting to write more here and probably revisit the diagrams, which were made entirely using Asymptote. But it’s a good post and worth publishing. I made my first Möbius strip during my sophomore year of high school in math class. Since then, I have been fascinated by their construction and mere existence. I share them with every person I can, basing my own presentation on a mix of my math teacher’s introduction, provided so many years ago, and a wonderful talk given by Matt Parker at the Royal Society. ...

I’ve added a Food page to the sidebar to document what I make this year, or to admit when a week has slipped by with minimal kitchen time. It’s a mixture of accountability and a desire to track how this Year of the Kitchen goes.

I officially left Art of Problem Solving on January 1. After over 7 years of full-time employment, and over 8 years total when I include contract work and my summer internship, I have my second post-college employer: Inflection Point Learning. The upshot is that AoPS partially own IPL, and nearly every person in our small Institutional Sales department moved with me. My job title is the same, my immediate boss and one direct report haven’t changed, but the new context gives some sparkle and flavor to this second phase in my career that I’m beginning just shy of thirty years old. ...

I finished 34 books in 2025. I maintained a more consistent pace than last year, and technically achieved my goal of reading more physical books. I read 9 physical books this year compared to 8 last year, but that’s over 26% of books in 2025 compared to less than 20% in 2024. Small victories. While I read 17% fewer books than in 2024, I only read about 7% fewer pages. A few books were rather long. (I’m looking at you, Sophie’s Choice.) According to the moods in StoryGraph, I leaned away from the darker books and more into properly emotional or reflective literature. I expect my dalliance with Jane Austen helped with that pivot, though books like The Handmaid’s Tale and Kindred are not for the lighthearted reader. It was a solid year for my reading. Other than trying to get through even more physical books, ideally ones I already own, I have no goals in mind for 2026 outside my usual attempts at reading across broad publishing dates within the genres I like. Enjoy the flurry of charts and the full list of books I read in 2025 at the end. ...

You can’t outrun a bad diet, but you can sure outspend your budget by frequenting restaurants. After a successful Year of Fitness, the next obvious step towards a healthier lifestyle is to control my eating habits. That means learning to love, or at least accept, cooking at home. 2026 will be the Year of the Kitchen. ...

I never thought to write about this longtime childhood staple of Christmas until my younger sister mentioned how nice it’d be to go back in time to share reviews of items that lasted a surprisingly long time. While the mechanical jaw of my Scooby-Doo stocking broke long ago, pressing its ear still manages to trigger one of three Christmas songs sung in an R-heavy voice (Rappy Rolidays!) ...