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!) ...
Among my thoughts when I announced my Year of Fitness, this segment at the end most clearly stated my intentions: I want my weight and impulses under control, and an exercise routine I can stick with that keeps me healthy and able to participate in all the sports and activities I enjoy for as long as possible. Health and fitness are lifelong projects, so this theme focused on rebuilding a stronger foundation that can support further growth while being resilient to those stressful days and difficult weeks that grind good intentions to dust. I needed a base to return to when I inevitably falter. Both the data and my gut suggest a clear success. ...
I upgraded to a paid subscription to The Verge this year. They’ve become a premier independent media outlet covering a broad set of topics while maintaining freedom from external influence. I’m sure everyone gets something a little different from the subscription. For me, it’s the newsletters. Victoria Song does great work on Optimizer covering the intersection of health and technology; even though I’m not in the market for any of it, she writes captivating pieces about balancing the positive and insidious sides of progress. Tina Nguyen’s Regulator has become my favorite way to read a mild amount of political news without being inundated by the firehose of the news cycle proper. ...
Stephen Hackett briefly discussed some changes to 512 Pixels on last week’s episode of Connected. Some of those thoughts temporarily live on his Now page. Here’s the main thrust: … my hope is to have fewer — but more meaningful — things in the RSS feed in 2026. He also mentioned putting this on the Now page rather than in a separate post because he can’t bring himself to blog about his own blogging. Few people read my site, so I have no such reluctance. ...
While navigating the house of technology you build for yourself, please hold onto banisters and sturdy bits of furniture because the rug may be pulled out from beneath you at any time. Software companies have a silly habit of doing one or both of the following: Taking a one-time payment to access their premium version forever. Giving away a free version of their product forever. The former exists to both gather capital (I presume) and ensnare people who are anti-subscription and have an outdated or incorrect understanding of software. The latter is solely designed to convert free users to paying customers. Here’s the thing: these same companies have another silly habit where they conveniently forget their marketing promise and request more money, or hoover some up with advertisements. They’re making a bet that enough users will convert to a subscription (or swallow the ads) compared to the number they alienate by this move, that they come out ahead. When it’s a service with few alternatives and all with similar business models, it’s difficult to hold any of them accountable. Not every company that has made these promises has proceeded to pull out the proverbial rug. There are at least a couple in each category that have remained steadfast, and those are just as intriguing to consider. Here’s a survey of the software and services I’ve used that have explicitly offered me forever at the cost of free or some fee, and where they are now. ...
I first joined the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) as a student member around 2016. Back then, I only knew about SABR by the semi-eponymous term “Sabermetrics” that roughly refers to the growing list of statistics and measures used to evaluate baseball. I was studying math and dabbling in computer science with vague hopes and dreams that I could bring those interests to bear on the game I loved. I knew little else about the organization, so when I met some excellent members of the Halsey Hall chapter in Minnesota at TwinsFest that winter, I was a bit shocked to find them all rather old. Not that they couldn’t have been career statisticians or have other relevant skills to analyzing baseball, but I was an introverted college student and didn’t appreciate the interaction. ...
I thoroughly failed this year, but I learned two connected lessons: I will always have distractions from writing. Writing projects require consistency. Distractions in life are a given. Friends and family visit us, we go visit family, people randomly invite us to some local event, and unexpected projects appear. My own hobbies distract me from my other hobbies. So much can demand my time and attention, and I have to prioritize where to place my effort. ...
The secret to writing is never held in a book explicitly about writing. Rather, it’s in the collective hours and thousands of pages spent reading anything one can get their hands on. It’s in the act of noticing how an author’s actions work, of forming opinions about whether a bit of prose succeeded in accomplishing its goal, so one can determine whether it’s a new tool to emulate or an ineffective path to avoid. Then, it’s in the act of writing. Of joyously beginning with a clear approach, then hitting heads against walls, falling into despair, becoming convinced the whole effort is worthless, and coming out the other side with a workable bit of narration. Do that over and over, while also reading, while also exploring the world, and one may just become a writer. ...
It’s always more fun to work on something other than what I should explicitly be doing in the moment, so ideas and small projects naturally arise from procrastination. I was having trouble returning to my NaNoWriMo work after my sisters visited last weekend, and I took fifteen minutes to learn how to locally run an LLM. My ninety percent use-case for LLMs is word refinement. While writing I will get a word stuck in my head, the wrong word for the exact feeling I’d like to describe. So, I tell some LLM (often Claude) to provide several more synonyms with varying connotations. This doesn’t rely on having up-to-date knowledge or internet access, so a nimble, offline, and local LLM would fit the task perfectly. ...
Erin and I saw Harry Potter and Cursed Child at the Lyric Theatre on Broadway last weekend. I did not anticipate the depth and detail of any component of that experience, and I left more fully appreciating what can make high-end theater so incredible. First, there’s the environment. While I theoretically knew that a show would take over a single theater for the duration of its run, I did not play that out to its conclusion. Everything about the Lyric—the lobby decor, concessions, how people dressed, how they talked to you, the merchandise—was created knowing that they had a Harry Potter show. No corner was left untouched by this knowledge, and in hindsight, that’s obvious. I bought Butterbeer, and our in-seat delivery order during intermission included a complimentary chocolate frog. All of that was a significant first step towards immersion. ...