A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ The jaw-dropping numbers and spread of casualties in World War 2. I had no idea the Soviet Union suffered so heavily. [▶️ Neil Halloran // vimeo.com]

2️⃣ This UK citizen experimented with how short they could write their home address and still get it a letter delivered to it. Pretty darn short, is the answer. [🔗 Vladh // microblog.vladh.net]

3️⃣ This clip of Jon Stewart’s show (granted, out of context) is a point of view that I’ve struggled to coherently express. He does a good job. [🔗 @gruber // twitter.com]

4️⃣ I just finished watching Loot on Apple TV+. It’s a delight! [📺 tv.apple.com]

5️⃣ I spent a fun few minutes perusing the ‘List of Internet top-level domain’ entry on Wikipedia after an idea sparked for a future project. Spoiler, the TLD I wanted is not yet available. Maybe someday. [🔗 wikipedia.org]

6️⃣ I always love a good magic explainer. [▶️ Daniel Roy // youtube.com]

7️⃣ I can’t not link to Mark Rober’s final Glitter Bomb video. [▶️ Mark Rober // youtube.com]

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Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know.

7 Things

I’m a day late, but I just turned 29. This will be the last year of my 20s and the last of my third decade here on Earth. I don’t really fear or regret getting older. I’m mostly just excited to see what this new year brings!

Looking back at being 28, I’d say it was one of the best years of my life, while still presenting its unique challenges. I feel more confident and sure of myself than ever before, and I feel like I have a direction. I have things I want to achieve set in my sights.

Thinking back through the things that defined being 28, there’s an obvious big one: my wife and I moved to a dream town here in Saranac Lake. We didn’t know it when we picked the spot, but we’d very quickly grow to love living in such a small town. It’s friendly. Everything is very walkable. All my favorite activities are nearby. This could be our forever hometown.

I got a new job, and despite a rocky start, I’m loving finally being a Guide for folks exploring new activities in the wilderness. Being a destination location, I get to talk with people from all over the world and from all walks of life.

I’ve made many great new friends, mostly thanks to #11 below. On the other hand, staying in touch with friends from previous homes is harder. I’ve spent almost all of my free time off of work getting outside and exploring new places and outdoor pursuits. It’s left less time than I expected for just hanging out or day-to-day life stuff.

Last year, I listed out 28 things I hoped to achieve in my “golden year”. Let’s see how I did.

Year 28’s list:

1. Read more books than I did last year. ✅ (12 versus 8!)
2. Spend at least four weekends in a tent. ✅ (All great. All memorable.)
3. Design more t-shirts than I did last year. ✅
4. Summit at least five peaks. ✅ (Knocked out 13 of the 46 ADK High Peaks.)
5. Write more consistently than I did last year. ❌ (Had three months where I hardly published anything.)
6. Spend more time journaling than I did last year. ❌ (If you count blogging and journaling, maybe. Which I tend to count both more these days.)
7. Get in the habit of reaching for healthy snacks rather than junk food. ❌
8. Make more regular phone calls to family. ❌
9. Learn how to fix things in my home. ✅ (Am I now a “handyman”? No. But I’m learning and less embarrassed about asking for help.)
10. Own up to mistakes more than I have in the past. ✅
11. Join a local club. ✅ (ADK Run Club is the best.)
12. Lend my talents to a local volunteer organization. ✅ (I helped, briefly, with the FISU World University Games. Not the local organization that I imagined, but it did help out local friends.)
13. Strike up conversations with strangers. ✅
14. Get good at cooking something with fresh ingredients. ❌
15. Finish at least one story-based video game. ❌
16. Make Date Night with my wife a priority. ❌
17. Close all my rings at least 50% of the days this year. ✅
18. Get out ice climbing. ✅ (Been out a bunch, and loving it.)
19. Climb at least three multi-pitch routes. ✅ (Did at least double that.)
20. Tick off at least 15 crag days. ✅ (Maybe doubled that one, too.)
21. Find a local climbing partner. (Maybe this should have been #18) ✅ (Shout out to Dakota!)
22. Take a non-local friend out climbing. ✅
23. Take my wife up a trad route. ❌
24. Learn a programming language / finish a programming course. ❌
25. Take a writing course. ❌
26. Take my wife on a surprise weekend trip. ❌
27. Play my trumpet. (Hooray for living in a house, not an apartment!) ❌
28. Work my way up to running a half-marathon. ✅ (One of my proudest achievements of last year. I decided I’d put it off long enough, and got out and ran it on New Year’s Eve.)

Results: ✅: 16 and ❌: 12

Honestly, I feel pretty good about the things I got done. Would it have been cool to cross off all 28 goals? Sure. But I think I knew even then that this was pretty deep into New Year’s Resolution territory; notoriously dicey for not working out. And I make the rules here, so I say not finishing everything is okay!

There are items that I wish I would have put more effort towards date nights, cooking and eating more healthily, for example. So instead of listing out now 29 new things that I’d like to do this year, I think I’m going to try to keep the good times rolling by extending the 12 that I didn’t get done last year into this year, and maybe adding just a couple more. I’m choosing to think of it as 30 things before 30. 😉

Year 29’s list (or 30 Before 30):

1. Write more consistently than I did last year.
2. Spend more time journaling than I did last year.
3. Get in the habit of reaching for healthy snacks rather than junk food.
4. Make more regular phone calls to family.
5. Get good at cooking something with fresh ingredients.
6. Finish at least one story-based video game.
7. Make Date Night with my wife a priority.
8. Take my wife up a trad route.
9. Learn a programming language / finish a programming course.
10. Take a writing course.
11. Take my wife on a surprise weekend trip.
12. Play my trumpet. (Hooray for living in a house, not an apartment!)
13. Finish requirements for the New York State Level 1 Rock Guide License.
14. Host (or be part of making happen) at least 10 friend or family get-togethers. Like game nights. Probably game nights.

(Bonus-but-somewhat-out-of-my-control: Make significant progress toward owning our own home.)

I’ve got 364 days. Wish me luck!

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• 28
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Journal

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ This macOS tips post is worth the price of admission just for the first one about the Stationary Pad option in the ‘Get Info’ menu. [🔗 - Tim Hardwick // macrumors.com]

2️⃣ The modern version of the Wikipedia speed run game. [🔗 @PeterSciretta // twitter.com]

3️⃣ Here’s another neat use case for GPT3: Make an RSS feed with a short summary of each article to help you decide whether to click through. [🔗 piqoni // piqoni.bearblog.dev]

4️⃣ Casey Newton’s predictions for this year look very on-point to me. [🔗 Casey Newton // theverge.com]

5️⃣ I’m liking the look of this Sidekick Notebook from Cortex Brand. I’ve been using the Studio Neat desk notebook for a couple of years, but I appreciate that this is made to anti-precious. [🎥 - Cortex Podcast // youtube.com]

6️⃣ Last Skier Standing is a bananas competition where nutty people skin up 1100 feet and ski back down, and then do it again and again at the start of every hour. Until there’s only one skier left. (They went for 60+ hours last time.) I kinda want to try. [🎧 The Dirtbag Diaries // overcast.fm]

7️⃣ Like Steve Jobs’ declination to sign an autograph — actually, more so — Merlin’s email turning down the opportunity to write about his alma mater is a work of art. [🔗 Merlin Mann // ungainly.me]

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Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know.

7 Things

From Leslie Berlin in a Steve Jobs Archive email update:

One evening after the event, as they were walking down O’Keefe Avenue looking for dinner, Steve—a notoriously fast walker—pulled to a halt. Someone in a store window was working on a Macintosh.

He had to take a closer look. How was this person using the Mac? Steve is so curious, so lasered in on trying to understand, that he is bent nearly double.

[…]

This is Steve at a pivotal moment. He’s about to turn 29. Apple, which he co-founded and chairs, has recently become one of the youngest companies ever to reach the Fortune 500. The Macintosh has been met with rave reviews. He is on top of the world.

I’m about to turn 29 myself, and though our trajectories are wildly different, I, too, know the keen excitement of seeing someone use, read, or experience something that you’ve poured yourself into. There’s nothing quite like it, and I hope Steve was proud to discover his creation in the hands of a customer that night.

Linked

Developer guru, badass hiker, and the diligently, quietly successful “Underscore” David Smith on the difficulty of matching what needs to be done to the day’s realistic potential:

The rest of my day was a bit of a mess. I didn’t feel creative, competent or clever. I mostly just floundered around for a few hours trying to fix bits and pieces but didn’t accomplish much. Largely, just feeling sorry for myself.

[…]

If I try to take a step back and be thoughtful about why I might feel like that today I think it is because I didn’t wisely match my choice of task to my physical state. I didn’t sleep well last night and think that put me at a disadvantage when I started working. Then by tackling one of the most challenging and frustrating things in programming (fighting the frameworks), I was setting myself up for disaster. From there it was just a progressive digging myself into a deeper hole productivity-wise. The smart thing likely would have been to recognize where I was cognitively/emotionally and then go after easier, quick win tasks today instead.

David professes so plainly what is monstrously difficult to do: listen to yourself.

Linked

For the first time in many years, I didn’t install any beta software on my devices. Rather than live on the cutting edge, testing features, and trying the new hotness before the rest of the world, I stayed on the on the public releases of Apple’s OSes last summer.

As if that wasn’t odd enough, when September rolled around, I felt very little desire to upgrade my phone to the latest and greatest. Indeed, I’m typing this very post out on my iPhone 13 mini — a device I’ve had for nearly a year and a half now — despite having the option to swap it as part of the iPhone Upgrade Program.

I don’t deceive myself into thinking that this is any sort of accomplishment. Sitting out a few months of beta testing, and holding onto a perfectly great phone for — swoon — more than 12 months is something that effectively everyone does. It’s truly a privilege that I have the opportunity to upgrade each year if I choose to.

And yet, it’s been a bit odd. I’m used to jumping at the chance to try the new OS features, write about them, and provide feedback. But this year, I felt satisfied to read others’ first impressions while living in the stable mainstream. I sought the delayed satisfaction of “unwrapping” the new software along with the rest of the world when it was “finished”.

Back on the physical side, my iPhone 13 mini has been my favorite iPhone, full stop. I longed for a smaller device when using the 12 Pro, and was rewarded with the nearly perfect 13 mini. The longer battery life, upgraded cameras, smaller notch, faster chip, and cooler design (👍 to the diagonal rear camera lenses) are all improvements over the 12 mini that make me glad that this is the phone I have and want to keep using.

This isn’t to say that I wasn’t interested in new features this year; I was! Stage Manager, Lock Screen widgets, Live Text, better Dictation, and the Dynamic Island all pulled at my heartstrings. But with my day job no longer relying on using my personal tech, or teaching others how to use theirs, I have less time and mental capacity for tech news, no matter how much I try to deny it. These days, I’m experiencing how more of the world uses their gadgets and finding the smaller, less drastic ways that they can make my life better. I’m not pushing the envelope so much as I’m using it as intended.

Maybe it’ll last, or maybe I’ll be enthralled by a compelling new shiney that will drag me back in. But I’m content for now, and hope my “content”¹ will still offer good, if different, insight.

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1. Sorry for that.↩︎

The weird and wonderful AI projects are start to come fast and furious. Spotify got a mic drop moment today announcing a personal AI DJ. It’s a product I feel like I should have predicted, but also find completely shocking. Here’s how Spotify describes it:

Ready for a brand-new way to listen on Spotify and connect even more deeply with the artists you love? The DJ is a personalized AI guide that knows you and your music taste so well that it can choose what to play for you. This feature, first rolling out in beta, will deliver a curated lineup of music alongside commentary around the tracks and artists we think you’ll like in a stunningly realistic voice. 

Watch the video below for a taste of what the AI DJ experience will be like. Personally, my first impression is that I’m blown away. Spotify has long worn the crown for music recommendation, and it looks like DJ will provide more insight into why certain music is served up. That’s always something I’m curious about, wondering, “Why this song?” What a useful idea to use the AI to “explain itself”.

However, I think it was intentional that the listener in Spotify’s video was wearing headphones. I see this a solo way to experience music. To me, music is deeply personal and emotional. I can’t imagine I’d love “X”, the DJ, sharing commentary about my listening history with others at house party or on a road trip.

Every so often, Spotify releases features that tempts me away from Apple Music. AI DJ is another one.

Linked Music

Paul Graham, with some striking thoughts on how writing focuses, refines, develops, and communicates ideas better than most anything:

Half the ideas that end up in an essay will be ones you thought of while you were writing it. Indeed, that’s why I write them.

[…]

I can to some extent write essays in my head. I’ll sometimes think of a paragraph while walking or lying in bed that survives nearly unchanged in the final version. But really I’m writing when I do this. I’m doing the mental part of writing; my fingers just aren’t moving as I do it.

[…]

The reason I’ve spent so long establishing this rather obvious point is that it leads to another that many people will find shocking. If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn’t written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial.

[…]

Putting ideas into words is certainly no guarantee that they’ll be right. Far from it. But though it’s not a sufficient condition, it is a necessary one.

Linked

My remaining grandfather passed away this past week. He was a foundational figure in my life, a role model who stuck to his values and principles. He loved his wife fiercely, and never, ever stopped caring for her, even as his own health declined. I’ll always remember Grandpa’s mischievous grin, which appeared when he got away with a joke that you didn’t expect from his typically serious demeanor. I like to think we share many things in common, the least of which are our unusual middle name and our inability to blow our nose without sounding like a blaring horn. I’ll miss him.

Here are just a few life lessons I gleaned from his 91 years of voracious life.

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1️⃣ To balance goofy and serious like a master.

2️⃣ To put your partner and family first.

3️⃣ Work hard, play hard.

4️⃣ It’s okay to enjoy the things that you enjoy.

5️⃣ Given the opportunity, people will rise to meet your expectations.

6️⃣ Independence is a thing to be cherished. But it doesn’t last forever, and it doesn’t do to resist help when those who care offer it.

7️⃣ Going fast in a boat brings a smile to anyone’s face.

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Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know.

7 Things

They say you learn something new every day. But it’s not every day that you newly learn an old thing. Or rather that a thing you learned as child, and have done every day since, well, you’ve been doing that thing wrong.

Yes, I recently learned that I’ve been tying my shoes wrong for over 20 years.

You know, I’ve always had a nagging feeling that other people’s shoes looked neater and stayed tied better than mine. I’ve actually been double-knotting my shoes every time to avoid their inevitable loosening. But I convinced myself, “You’re a Boy Scout, you know knots,” and kept on keeping on. Then, at the age of 28, when watching a YouTube video¹ about alternative ways to lace boots to avoid hot spots, I heard the sentence that split my life into Before and After: “If you wrap the loop the opposite way, your knot will be cockeyed and not hold tight.”

For anyone else out there who thinks their shoe lacing method might also be wrong, here’s was my old process:

1. Cross one strand around the other, and pull tight.
2. Make a loop (actually called a bight) with the lefthand strand.
3. Cross the righthand strand under and around the loop.
4. Push a loop/bight through the loop created between the two strands.
5. Pull both loops to tighten the knot.
6. Tie the two loops in an overhand knot to double it.

Can you see my fatal flaw? It turns out that by going over and around the loop with the righthand strand instead will get the knot to sit perpendicular to the shoe, rather than the awkward parallel nonsense that I’d been doing for two decades. It had never occurred to me to try a different method.

If there’s a profound takeaway to be extracted here, it’s this: It sure is easy to get stuck in our ways of doing things and then never reconsider them. But I wanted to share how, even the simplest bit of knowledge that I took for granted — like how to tie my shoes — could be reevaluated and improved. Even for someone who literally ties life-preserving knots for a living. It’s always good to keep an open mind.

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1. I regret to admit that I can’t find the life-changing video to share. Trust me, I’ve tried.↩︎