As part of my year of focus, I’ve been trying to spend more consistent chunks of time working on programming. In particular, right now I’m focusing on doubling down on my Python knowledge, and exploring some other aspects of computer science that interest me. After checking out a few books and tutorials, I’ve made my way back to a website that I found a number of years ago, which is the most intriguing to me: Project Euler. ...
I missed my first self-imposed Monday deadline in a while. I’ve actually been on Spring Break, in a sense. My girlfriend is in town visiting, and we’ve been staying pretty busy. Tomorrow we’re on our way to Universal Studios Hollywood. We both went to the Orlando location back in high school, so we’re somewhat familiar with what it has to offer. But it will be an excellent time. I just wanted to write this brief post as a marker of my failed deadline, but to keep the number of posts per week consistent enough. ...
I decided to go watch Free Solo this afternoon. I had seen a snippet of Alex Honnold’s 60 Minutes special while in high school, and remember being impressed. Then I discovered this documentary about him won an Oscar. Even better, it was being shown in some local theaters. The short version is this: No film has made me feel less competent and driven, yet I don’t envy necessarily envy Alex’s single-mindedness. ...
Up front, here is a link to my math blog that has the meat of this post. Also, there will be a PDF version attached. I’ve finally gotten around to writing another math post. There’s a mix of reasons why I’ve been writing about a lot of other things. First, there have just been other topics in the front of my mind that I felt like writing about in the moment. Second, there were not any particular pieces of math I felt inspired to write about. And third, preparation of a math post is significantly more work for me, as I care a lot about being accurate, precise, and clear in my presentation. ...
The other day, I finally finished making my room fairly clean and I tidy. I put together a bookshelf to house some odds and ends, removed the final cardboard boxes still hanging around since I moved in, and sorted my papers. I felt good. But something was still missing. This week’s Comical Start episode featured me discussing my desire for a Roomba “just to have something that seems like it’s alive in my apartment.” However, a Roomba is not in my future. After a healthy discussion of why an actual pet is not a possibility right now, Grant and I decided I would get a plant. As a result, I went out Saturday morning and got myself a little succulent. My new pal, Calvin (naturally named after the spiky-haired first-grader Calvin) ...
And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby A few weeks ago I read The Great Gatsby for the first time. It was a pretty good book. I don’t have much experience reading Fitzgerald, and the style of his era – as well as the upper class focus – is a bit different from what I normally read. I enjoyed the story, but the only thing that really stuck with me was the quote above. It is not central to the book, but I find it particularly profound and relevant today. ...
During a recent recording of OHAC, we talked about yearly themes. In short, yearly themes are meant to be broader versions of resolutions. They are not necessarily defined by explicit goals, but rather a frame of mind, or a general approach to the upcoming year. We talk about it in that episode, and there are links to episodes of the podcast Cortex with more information about the idea of yearly themes. My theme is the *Year of Focus*. Now that I have more freetime on my hands, I want to use it to help improve my attention span and make significant progress on projects I put off while in college. The first step in this, before it was even official, was the reading binge I’ve written about a few times now. ...
The Super Bowl ended not too long ago. It was an incredibly boring game (especially when compared to last year’s shootout extravaganza.). In a way, that is fitting. I spend a good chunk of time about 7 months out of the year watching baseball. Once baseball is over in early November, I transition to college and professional football. It is less frequent than baseball, but fills the sports-shaped void in my heart well enough. ...
This weekend I went whale watching for the first time. It was a fantastic experience. I went with Offshore Blue Adventures, which I’d probably consider the premier experience for anybody who wants to see whales and dolphins up close. They use an inflatable boat, similar to what the Coast Guard or Navy SEALs would use. The benefits of small boats on the ocean is that they ride large swells very easily; the benefits of small boats when whale and dolphin watching is that you can get closer without scaring off the animals. ...
A couple years ago, I watched Split. It was a very engaging movie. I walked away quite thrilled by the psychology of the entire situation. One of the people I saw the movie with mentioned it was a spiritual successor to a movie made about fifteen years prior, Unbreakable. It wasn’t clear there was any connection, other than the main character of Unbreakable having a short cameo at the very end of Split. Beyond this brief mention, the movies largely left my mind and I don’t recall talking with anyone else who saw Split. ...