A quiet August night teems with sound. Drowsy birds chirp in the twilight while a motley choir of insects let their faint buzzing overwhelm the warm air once one pays them attention. An occasional croak rises into overt awareness, rumbling its way above the rustling of squirrels and chipmunks in trees overhead. What else is out there? I know not, safely perched as I am on a porch with lights and devices to expel the most unsavory of small characters this evening. ...
There are three ways to hold four marimba mallets in your hands. Really, there are two ways, one of which has a slight variation. It comes down to whether you hold the outside mallets between your index and middle fingers, allowing them to cross in your palms,1 or you hold them between your middle and ring fingers.2 Crossing provides stability. The mallets are firm in the grip. The player easily brings them both to bear on the marimba or vibraphone. Shift to the desired width and hammer away. It’s staccato. It’s sturdy. It’s jazz. ...
Before moving my blog, I’d been rethinking my writing process. As I noted several months ago, I want to relieve the pressure of pushing out posts on a regular schedule by focusing on improvement and quality. That means recognizing that I earn nothing by writing faster, and that I have to actively engage with my prose. It means following a thorough process of writing and revision while not losing the intuition and nose for what feels right. It means reminding myself that patience and perseverance are always rewarding. ...
I moved my blog from WordPress.com to Bluehost and the open-source version of the WordPress engine back in 2018. I wanted more control, and wasn’t willing to pay the Automattic folks for the right to add more plugins to my blog. Instead, I probably paid even more money to a different corporation because, well, it felt better. Technology has evolved, and I’ve decided to move backwards and save some money. With three or four hours of work, I migrated my entire blog off WordPress and into Hugo, a lightweight static blogging engine that relies directly on Markdown. The files live in GitHub (for free) and are subsequently hosted on Netlify at their free tier, saving me a couple of hundred dollars each year.1 ...
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’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. ...
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!) ...
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. ...