Latest Posts (20 found)
Weakty 1 weeks ago

Counting Priorities

Take a moment and ask yourself: what are my priorities ? Perhaps, like me, you’ve walked decades on this earth and never really asked yourself this sort of pointed question. But let’s not dwell on why we aren’t asking such questions, and try to answer the question itself. (I refuse to answer the question). I’ve often struggled with trying to do too much at once. Not knowing what my priorities are makes making the decision of what to do harder. In this context, I’m talking of priorities of the privileged sort—the ones that live way at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: priorities of expression, artistic or otherwise—I’m talking about Priority and Self-actualization. I suspect many people have a long-standing ache, a desire for meaningfulness in their lives, and I think conceptually, priority, and the difficulty of prioritizing, has a lot to do with that. Perhaps that is why the quote at the beginning of this post struck me. A priority represents how you spend your precious time. I see it as a chain: with the time that you have, you make decisions about how you want to spend it, which leads to actions, those actions lead to results and hopefully, those results (and hopefully, the act of acting) are fulfilling and meaningful. Pretty simple, when you write it out. But if it’s so simple, why did the quote hit me so hard? Mann’s words can get you to stop and think about what a priority is. A very abrupt stop. The kind where you might actually wonder about the very definition of a word, and how you apply it from your lexicon. With that stopping, you might have clarity. In this case, perhaps it is clarity on when to say “no”. Clarity to assess what really matters. Clarity to slow down and think about things. In a search of meaning and fulfillment, I think we need fairly constant and repetitive deliberation on what our priorities are. I don’t think I’ve been doing that repetitive deliberation. What can make this more difficult is experiencing priority-envy. Sometimes, we might come across someone who has convictions and priorities so strong and apparent that we can’t help but feel jealous; they are on a path that seems so obvious to them that it makes us wonder what it will take to find our own path. Where does their passion come from? we might ask, how did they know , or even more importantly in today’s age, how do they remain focused on it? I can only speak for myself here, but I suspect others might feel the same sometimes: an overwhelming feeling that one must narrow in and specialize on something that yields—what, exactly? The answer may vary from person to person. To have recognition in your field? Perhaps to be the self-same person that others envy for how convicted we are in our walking life. Or more insidiously, to feel like we’re going somewhere ? At the root of this wondering are plenty of uncomfortable questions. It can be overwhelming, simply crushing to even stop and think: what does one do with a life? Or to add even more pressure: what does one do with the non-contiguous slivers of life existing between one’s obligations? . So, I spent some time taking Mann’s quote very literally—why not? What are my two priorities? But I wouldn’t even let myself answer the question, Instead, I looked for a way out, a way to take a branch, and subdivide it into smaller branches. I jumped straight to bargaining. I told myself that there are given and chosen priorities. Taking care of yourself, your family, maintaining a roof over your head—those are all given priorities. Chosen priorities are based on how you prioritized your discretionary time. I could come up with two priorities in that sense, couldn’t I? I started asking myself some questions. Was writing one of my two priorities? Painting? Reading and self-educating? Community-involvement? I ended up combing through a field littered with passing (and some staying) interests. But trying to find a priority in an interest or a hobby wouldn’t do it. I needed to zoom out. That meant asking myself what these existing things had in common. Using this very literal lens did yield me this: I thought about values behind all of this—the driving factor behind my priorities, and subsequently, my behaviour. A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me a simple question: what motivates you? Until then, no one had ever asked me a question like that. I had not asked myself a question like that. The question isn’t so different than asking yourself what your priorities are. And to zoom-out again, I think both questions, again, are about values. Perhaps like me, you have a feeling of what your values are, but you haven’t really expressed them before. Surely, I was living them, no? and the lens into that landscape was most easily seen by my behaviour (and so we return back to priorities, back to how we spend our time). So, like me, perhaps you’ve never asked yourself this whole line of destabilizing questions. But if it is true that some of the answers lie in how we spend our time, then it stands we should talk about and assess automatic behaviour. Looking at my default actions and how I spend my time provides a fairly visible trail of breadcrumbs to work back up to identifying motivations, priorities and perhaps most importantly, values. While many of our automatic behaviours have been co-opted by attention-stealing-devices, I remain optimistic that looking at what we default to doing can give us a hand in coming up with some answers. Unfortunately, some of those answers might not be so glamorous (or might be downright toxic and scary). Let me self-pathologize to see if we can work something out for one "part" (in the IFS-sense) of me. When I look at my inability to sit still and rest, I see a creeping feeling that I should be working on something. My spare moments should be spent creating, producing and improving . Hmmm—ok, I see that work might be broad enough of a category to qualify as a priority, here. Now, what might be the value that is driving that behaviour? It might be Security (securing future work, financial stability etc). But it might also be valuing Expression, or Creativity. So it seems values can be conflate, connect and co-depend. Taking a very literal approach to assessing priorities can be helpful if a bit constraining. But the act of writing this post out, felt altogether gratuitous and indulgent—even more so than my normal writing. Perhaps priorities aren’t always things that need to be identified with words. Maybe they are a unstated presence that manifest in our behaviour and is directly linked to our values. Stopping and asking ourselves about these sorts of things can provide useful pauses and opportunities for recalibration in our lives. And yet, I’m not sure I believe that. Because why else would this quote have struck me as it did? I do not end this post with any conclusive thoughts, but more questions than I had before. So, I will leave you with another quote that have been floating in my mind, and I find sufficiently calming in these existential waters:

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Weakty 2 weeks ago

Phone Crossed Lovers

They sat on the stones marking the entry of the park. Some three feet off the ground. They sat facing each other, like pawns on a chessboard, yet they stared downward, a familiar stare, into their phones. I didn’t notice it at first, but their arms were crossed, loosely touching, their hands holding their phones and bent back unto their faces. I felt judgement ooze out of me. A sick sadness writhing out of what this casually sculpted pose appeared to be. So barely connected, both of their eyes cast in a vacant gaze, or rather, their gaze pulled viciously into some other torpid void. How fair of me, to pass this critical eye over this moment! What are these two people—what narrative had I made for them? Phone-crossed lovers, apparently, uninterested in the person sitting across from them—physically touching them—but on other worlds. But surely, I could be more gracious? Two independent souls exploring the cosmos of "the web" — supporting each other with gentle presence? Two people that just happened to need to send a few respective messages, maybe check e-mail, while arm-in-arm? No, clearly my mind is made up—another moment of alienation for myself, another moment where I find myself increasingly judgemental about the time we spend on our phones, rather than connecting with each other. Here I was, yet again, dropping the gavel of my judgement on two strangers, touching but not connecting, according to me. Some days, I feel sad about this. Other days, I don’t care. Occasionally, I feel I’m blaming something far bigger and incomprehensible for a specific lack in my life—and I’m just taking it out on society, man . Does it matter? The days tick by. I wake up in the mornings, having told myself I won’t look at my phone until the sun rises, until 9, until, oh wait, I just did it. None of this is new. Yet, I continually find myself thinking and writing about this topic. And I suppose I will, so long as I feel that mixture of frustration, and judgement nestled in my own hypocritical addiction, and quiet loneliness: a single lily pad in a stagnant pond. What of it? Clearly, parts of me are triggered by an image so simple as two people sitting together, yet seemingly miles far apart, each of their gazes respectively absorbing some content that will soon be a distance memory, if at all. In a moment’s tableau, I see a strong representation of a longing for something so far its inverse, that I’m here trying to write my way toward it. Part of getting older is having to grieve that the world is no longer the one you grew up in; the familiarities of the known, the environment that shaped you, the moments that marked you indelibly—you can’t go back. There is no turning back the clock. I might wish for it, but that's a futile desire. If you aren’t the one wishing for it, you’ll hear no shortage of others griping, and under that bemoaning, an unutterable longing. Inversely, there is an acceptance, and within that , a relieving feeling I'm still making out the shape of: I’m wondering if there is some hope — hope in two linked arms.

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Weakty 1 months ago

Just call

Just pick up the phone and call a loved one. Just call, don’t bandy messages back and forth about when a good time is. Pick up your phone, hit the little phone icon, and say "hello, I was thinking about you and wanted to say hello, is now a good time to chat?" If the person picks up and says, "sorry, now’s not a good time", that’s fine. You called. Maybe they’ll say I’ll call you back . In the end, you heard their voice and they heard yours. If the person doesn’t pick up, you can leave a voicemail. Maybe they don’t check their voicemail. Maybe they don’t know how. But you can still do it. When you call unannounced and your call is missed, that recipient might think it’s an emergency. Who would call unless it was an emergency? They might think. They might text you back and say, "is everything alright? I saw you called." As I continue the practice of "just call" I know to follow up a missed call with a message that says: "hey, I was just thinking of you and wanted to catch up and hear your voice! No need to call back, I’ll try again another time." A few years ago, I started my year with a resolution that if I thought of someone, I would send them a message . I did that. It yielded more connection in my life. But a text message was easy, though, and I think it is a poor stand-in for hearing a loved one’s voice. The point of all this, though, was to reach out when the feeling of being able to reach out was present in me . Then, I changed messages to phone calls for the closest people in my life. But it’s not easy. There are many things that stand in the way of calling. It feels more vulnerable and intimate and when it doesn’t go the way we want, it’s uncomfortable. So we might tell ourselves that people’s lives are so busy . We don’t want to interrupt. It might hurt, even just a little, to reach out and hear that a person can’t talk right now, or when they don’t pick up. I’m still learning to practice empathy and understanding when someone isn’t available, and you are; when you want human connection, but the other side can’t meet that need in the moment. If that moment hurts, acknowledge and feel that hurt, and then move on with the day. It can be difficult to feel feelings, of course, so we can also reassure ourselves rationally (if we must). By calling and experiencing a missed connection, you can know that you’ve shown up for the people you love, by trying to reach out. And, yes, the true reality is that people are indeed often busy— you weren’t when you called, but that was you , and this is them . Sometimes, you might try and try and try again, only for the pile of missed connections to grow, like loose threads coming off an old sweater. Sometimes the person won’t hit the ball back. Maybe you’ll need to try scheduling your calls. Maybe even that doesn’t work out so great. This is something we fear to experience — a connection we value growing weaker, or the other party simply is not able or willing to meet you where you are at. Sometimes that’s just life. Sometimes we grow apart. Sometimes we grow back again. But wouldn’t you be grateful to say you tried when you were able? Not many people call these days.

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Weakty 2 months ago

Our efforts, in part, define us

What happens when something we enjoy doing that took effort becomes effortless? And what happens if that original effort was a foundation on which we saw value in ourselves? If our efforts, in part, define us, then our efforts have intrinsic value. Our efforts may help us understand a position we want to occupy, an identity we carry, or an outlook we present. This value contributes to an internal economy of joy, self-respect, fulfillment, happiness. When effortful things become effortless, what becomes of our position in these economies? As you can see, I have a few questions here. I know someone who spent a part of their adult life taking beautiful photographs, developing them by hand, framing them, cataloging them. Along came the ubiquity of digital cameras and smartphones, and "film" became infinitely available. Offhandedly, one day, this person mentioned that with the proliferation of smart phone cameras, and the ease with which one can take photos, they had found that some days their desire to continue was diminishing, and their work had lost meaning. Technology has a history of making effortful things effortless, and there is sometimes a hidden loss in that advancement. I figure people are continually being left behind in a similar manner day-to-day. Technology continues advancing (for the most part), and more things that remain effortful will become effortless. And "we" (ie, the populations who can afford to sit around and have crises of identity on these topics) will be further pushed to re-evaluate certain parts of our definitions of self. For myself, in the last 10 years, my work of writing code has largely defined what I do with my working time. Now I experience large swaths of that work being created and done by AI (sometimes amazingly well, sometimes poorly), and I find myself thinking of the photographer above. It's not my wish that people can't have access to a more effortless way to write code, but I feel a strange sadness that there is less left to the act of the craft. I have had this note in a draft state for several weeks now because I still can’t quite come to terms with how I’m feeling about things. There are so many nuances and unclear thoughts rolling around in my head about this shift. I think the only thing that is vaguely clear is that none of this would matter if making money wasn’t at play. If I was just writing code, (or taking film photographs) for fun in my free time because I enjoyed it, well, I don’t think I’d be feeling so conflicted. Being paid to work and presenting my capacities through my craft is an exchange that I have been able to derive value from in its effortful-ness. Often times I've worked on utterly boring tasks that I would have loved to have a tool that could automate. But I didn't. And even in those menial moments I did derive some pleasure in my capacities. Of course, when it came to the real challenges, that was where I felt a pleasure and value in putting forth effort. As a consultant, I work in a lot of different places, often for brief stints of time. And at many of these places, I see a large push, top-down, to encourage people to use AI. These employees, previously having entered an employment agreement where their capacities and experience would be exchanged for money, are now being asked that their abilities be augmented. In this way, the level continues to skew toward privileging production, often without understanding and people using their own perspectives. When I see sentiments similar to mine, I often see reactions where people say that AI is simply a tool and that you must learn to use it and incorporate it into your toolbox. That's fine. That's well and good. But all I'm trying to say here is that I feel a lack and a loss for something. I don't understand it yet. The title of this post, our efforts, in part, define us , is just a phrase that popped into my head. I'm not really sure if I even believe it or if I've fully fleshed out this single statement. But some part of it rings true to me. I wonder what will happen to us and our efforts. Will we be driven into further niches that are effortful, that we can derive value from? Will we become vague blobs that are formless, ill-defined, and despondent? All of this presupposes a few things —that one can (and/or should ) aim to derive value from work, that a meaningful identity is constructed by doing effortful things, that people generally are happier when they can use their skills and experiences to make something. And what’s more, there is a fine-line here between glorifying people with experience deriving value, and sounding like a shitty gatekeeper. I will continue working for various clients. I suspect I will continue hearing leadership push AI on employees. And I will continue observing how people respond to this. Of course, for many people a job is just a job , as they say, and they'll do whatever they can to get it done more quickly (or work several jobs at once). Those very same people might find more value from their efforts now that AI is making their jobs easier. They can turn to better supporting their family, following other interests outside of work, finding other meaningful things, etc. But at this time, I don't really see how this won’t further trample people’s spirits in the realm of work, unless we also reshape our expectations of work itself. Is it worth the effort?

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Weakty 2 months ago

Limitless Encouragement

You were born with a limitless supply of encouragements. Use every one of them. Last winter I noticed this small innocuous bit of paper taped to a neighbourhood post-board. On it were the words I have quoted above. It sticks with me to this day and comes to mind frequently. Are the people around you encouraging? Do conversations you have even get to a point where there is space for encouragement to surface? I don’t think encouragement from others comes about unless you are being vulnerable to some degree: you share something you’re shyly interested in, you admit that things aren’t going the way you’d like in some situation, you tell someone about a hope or a dream you have for something you’d like to create. Occasionally, I’m surprised when I put forward a bid of something I’d like encouragement on, and it floats on by unnoticed, my partner in conversation not picking up on the fact that I’d indeed like someone to root for me. In those moments, I feel like a boring houseplant that will go another day unwatered. It’s quite uncomfortable to even write about: this reality where so much of our interactions can seem to come down to an economy of attention: will I be heard, let alone encouraged? When I stop and think about it, it seems silly to hope for encouragement, when just getting someone’s attention can be difficult enough. But on the act of encouraging: I have been doing this for what feels like quite some time. I think I am an encouraging person. I can hear myself when I say encouraging things. There are many things I don’t do well in life, but being encouraging isn’t one of them. I don’t believe it is entirely altruistic. Sometimes I give in hopes of getting back a return on my investment—I too, would like some encouragement. Other times, I give and I give freely. Whether genuine, or conflated with ulterior motives, I hold on to hope for encouragement . I keep giving it, because the pool is right next to me. It is a pool that goes deep, deeper than I can plunge, it descendes farther than I can hold my breath. For a long time I have taken from the pool and shared it with others, and now at this stage in my life, I’m slowly learning to restore myself from it on my own accord. To sit by it, in the sun and lounge, and to be encouraged at my own leisure. We may be born with a limitless supply of encouragement to give, but how many have we deigned to share with ourselves?

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Weakty 2 months ago

Bad Sleep Scores and Good Sleep Aids

I’ve been sick for a couple of days now, and so the "sleep scores" presented by my watch are abysmal. My first night, I was feverish. I dreamt that I had to relearn the alphabet, but I had to do it through my dreams, one letter per dream at a time. Peppered in with this delusional thinking were various facts about the Roman Empire, from an audiobook I was listening to help me fall asleep. As I pondered over my abysmal sleep scores (23/100!), I wondered about how the Garmin watch can calculate how well you sleep. So I looked it up. Garmin uses a third party called First Beat Analytics, which seems to be some kind of heartbeat analytics software. Then it uses that data to rate your sleep on a scale of 0 to 100. Generally, the data that’s mostly used is heart data, but Garmin also has data related to how much exercise you got, and that obviously plays a part in how well you sleep and how much sleep you need to recover. But I didn’t write this post to dive into how Garmin watches work. I was only partially interested in that. What I have been thinking about is how I am at the mere beginning of a life with less sleep due to having children. Of course, I was warned. [1] . I might even be one of those lucky people that can function with a bit less sleep than others. Moreover, I’m a morning person. So you might say that the odds are stacked in my favour at this time. That being said, I’ve already encountered several delirious, sleep-deprived middle-of-the-night moments that I will treasure in my weird way. Aside from the possible perils of adjudicating one’s own sleep, I’ve been adjudicating the definition of sleep in itself. And I’ve been wondering about the term rest. Sleep with children in your life becomes a zone beyond just rest . It’s a moment of being able to drop all responsibilities. Maybe that’s what rest is by definition, or that’s what it’s partially being redefined to now. It’s a shame I can’t be conscious during it. [2] . Another fun fact, I love falling asleep to nonfiction stuff about space. I go through waves of being fascinated by space and the cosmos. For the first two months of our kids’ lives, I was listening to the book "The Universe in Your Hand" over and over. I listened to the whole book and then backtracked to different parts trying to find the interesting parts. It’s a particularly good book because it uses the second-person narrative, placing you in the proverbial driver’s seat as you explore different facets of space, quantum physics, and other theoretical things. That plug aside, if anybody knows any other space or scientific non-fiction audiobooks they’d recommend, send them my way. I think what I’m looking for are more comprehensive versions of what I got to study in elementary school. You know when you would spend a unit on space and just learn about planets and stuff like that? Basically, I want the version of that that’s a bit more advanced, almost like a textbook being read to me that I fall asleep to every night. Another thing that lulls me to sleep is planning the next move on a project. It’s part exciting, part menial, but it seems to drop me like a stone into a still pond: once the ripples fade — I’m gone. Or occasionally, I’ll think about putting together a perfectly packed stationary kit for going out to draw or paint: just the right number of different-sized pens, a few select colours for a limited palette, and the right paper. I’ve done things like this since I was a kid—try to set myself up to have vibrant, adventurous dreams—I don’t think about the painting I would make, but the steps I would take to go paint it. I’ve often thought I could set myself up to dream something incredible. Does it work? Maybe. Most days I don’t remember my dreams. But perhaps I still have them, then in that illusory, invisible rest—then, I wake up restored. When I mentioned our expecting to someone, they said: "prepare not to sleep for 10 years". Here’s MY TIP: don’t say things like that to people, even if you think you’re being funny. They know they’re not going to sleep. You don’t need to make it even more dramatic or scary than it already seems. ↩ I think when I was 18, I devoured everything I could about lucid dreaming. Never worked. ↩ When I mentioned our expecting to someone, they said: "prepare not to sleep for 10 years". Here’s MY TIP: don’t say things like that to people, even if you think you’re being funny. They know they’re not going to sleep. You don’t need to make it even more dramatic or scary than it already seems. ↩ I think when I was 18, I devoured everything I could about lucid dreaming. Never worked. ↩

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Weakty 2 months ago

Spark Joy, throw everything out

A few weeks ago I was visiting some family in Guelph. After, I went for a short bike ride in the evening. I found myself at a Little Library in a corner of the city that I hadn’t explored before. Inside it, I found Spark Joy , a book by Marie Kondo. While I know a bit about her writing and methodology, I’ve never really dug into her work. This book seems to be a follow up to The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. The first half of the book provides case studies, methodologies and suggestions for approaching tidying. The second half features illustrated step by step guides on how to actually take on specific tidying tasks. As I flipped through the pages, I found a surging excitement in me at the possibility of clearing out some junk. For me, clutter tends to just accumulate slowly, accreting in corners and under beds and desks until it becomes a noticeable burden. At that point, I go through bouts of rapid cleaning, and skew towards getting rid of things with a manic energy. Regardless of the technique you’re using to clear clutter, for me, the act of discarding things out brings up thoughts on wastefulness, reuse, and abundance. I feel like this comic below aptly summarizes some of my thoughts on this. Of course, discarding stuff and clearing clutter doesn’t mean you are a rich minimalist. Yet this comic strikes a chord for me, it resonates in my mind, transporting me to memories of physical spaces owned by wealthy people that I’ve found myself in. There’s a kernel of truth, there. And of course, conversely, people with less wealth often need to keep things around for reuse, resale, and repairs—you can't carelessly throw away things that allow you to continue to be resourceful. There are no two ways about it. I can’t go through bouts of throwing clutter and junk away without feeling like we live in a bizarre, absurd world, especially in comparison to other times and places in our world. How do we get to a place where I am literally throwing away or donating unused things? Rich minimalist or not, the ability for clutter to accumulate in a hyper-capitalist, consumerist culture is altogether too easy. How many times have I bought something just because it was on sale? Or because it was in good condition at a second-hand store? I don’t exactly exhibit presence of mind when making decisions about accepting new items into my home. The default has often just been: yes, I will take that, thank you. I’m thinking about this more, as our apartment will soon fill up with possessions that belong to our new child. I’ve been finding myself asking myself: how can I encourage having a respectful appreciation for the things we have in our life, and model a healthy relationship with acquiring and letting go of objects? I recently brought up this topic with a friend on a long ride home. He told me that for him, getting an object means that the object sort of carries a weight—a set of responsibilities behind it. There are implicit requirements in ownership. Our objects need to be taken care of, used appropriately, and have their maximum potential engaged. If you aren't doing all those things then you will be worn down just by the mere presence of this object. You shouldn’t feel any obligation to objects. They should bring light, not dread. I think this is the idea behind an object "sparking joy". My project list is long, but tidying is quickly bubbling up past many of the other things I want to do. I need to know where things are, now that we’re a family. It’s not exactly the fun I might have chosen for myself in the past, but the methodological approach that Spark Joy brings turns what might have been a chore into something that actually yields autonomy and makes way for a healthy sense of control (and at least knowing where the sunscreen is). Each person has to find their own method for sorting through the detritus we accumulate. But the more I read about mechanisms for taking care of clutter, the more I wonder about what drives our capacity to collect—is it fear-based? comparison-oriented? opportunity oriented? Or are we just as the Magpie? I’d like to imagine there is a way to break the cycle of over-consumption and thoughtless accumulation. I know there is a way to say "no thank you" to new items that appear at our door. Maybe it requires being mindful in the moment, and monitoring impulses. Or maybe I should shut the door, find the goddamn key amongst the clutter, and lock it.

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Weakty 3 months ago

Returning to Anki

Recently, I brought the spaced repetition system software Anki back into my life. For a while, between 2019 and 2023, I was using it frequently to practice learning French. Anki is a remarkable tool and allowed me to learn 5,000 French words (and a few other things too). What brought me back to Anki was learning that there have been some updates to the " algorithm " used to determine when cards should be shown to users. If you browse some top posts on the Anki subreddit, you'll see that several contributors have been working on refining this memory algorithm to offer the most results for the least work—I suppose that's what an algorithm is, after all. Needless to say, my ears perked up when I read about people trying to optimize human memory and recall. So I reinstalled Anki and decided to purchase the iOS version for my phone. Having Anki on my phone makes a much bigger difference than having just the desktop application. Now, when I'm stealing slivers of time from my day, I'm able to do a little recall practice and work towards improving my memory about various things. I've even gone searching for the French decks I used to use, which have since been updated, and have reinstalled them. It's been fun and impressive to see that even the older algorithm was working quite well—I've been able to recall words that were probably set to only be seen after years had passed. I also picked up a deck for learning geography. I never thought to do this before! I have a good friend who can name just about any capital of any country, recognize flags, or identify the shapes of countries easily. I was impressed when I learned this about him and decided I want to try to do the same. As I've gone about learning these different capitals, flags, and countries, I've realized the extent of my ignorance when it comes to geography. I've learned so much about different countries already. Just out of natural curiosity about these places, I've gone on Wikipedia to read more about them, and that's been very satisfying. I also found a tool (built with web assembly!) that converts multi-line poetry into Anki cards for memorization. The intent expressed as an example on the website is to memorize Hamlet, but I've been using it to memorize song lyrics and it's pretty effective. What I’ve been most surprised to (re)learn, is how flash cards and engaging my memory is pushing my curiousity. I think this is one of the better parts of school — seeing what your mind can do with new information, and following your mind going to new places: Did you know the capital of Vanuatu is Port Vila? I didn’t even know Vanuatu existed.

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Weakty 4 months ago

I don't look back much as a rule

I was thinking about journalling and the lyric "I don't look back much as a rule" came to me. It’s from the song " Pink Bullets " by The Shins. Go ahead, take a listen while I write up the rest of this post. I’ve been wanting to reduce clutter lately, both physically and digitally. I was looking through my journals and daily notes and marvelling at how much I’ve captured over the years. Journaling is something I’ve done so much, yet I still don’t seem to have a strong, opinionated system in place, which occasionally bothers me at how scattered it can feel. Here’s what I’m working with right now: I’ve kept a physical journal on and off for several years. My favourite things about keeping a paper journal are: I’ve accumulated about nine or ten journals, probably. They don’t take up much more space than a single crate (which is also packed with a few sketchbooks). Somewhere down the line, I’ll consider scanning them and putting them through OCR, but that’s an activity for later. I’ve been using Obsidian for a few years now and it offers a very pragmatic and useful way to keep notes. The best features of a system like Obsidian are: Note embeds are a feature of obsidian where you can embed one part of a note into another. I got this idea from this blog post . The idea is fairly simple in practice: By the end of this setup, I’m able to go see what happened in a month at a glance, or even all the super important things that happened in a year. [1] The important thing, is that this is a low-friction system. The bulk of the work is done daily, taking 2 minutes, with some additional work done to create a week, month and year template. The song lyrics that popped into my head that inspired writing this made me realize that I really don’t look back that often. Journalling and capturing what’s happened in a day, a week, a month, all seem to be things that I write but rarely read. Every now and then I’ll go back and look at what happened in a month in one of the Obsidian "roll-up" notes. Even more rarely, will I go back and read one of my paper journals. Sometimes I feel a bit self-absorbed in that I’m so particular about the notes I keep. It can be feel a bit naval-gazey. But, I also have to remind myself that more than anything, this is a cathartic, messy process, and that’s fine. Being interested in the how of things is also totally fine. If I’m trying to rule out feeling like a narccisus, at least I can feel at ease that I don’t lull myself to sleep reading my own journal entries. I think my ideal system would look like this: That would give me the best of both worlds, albeit with the monotony of scanning things. Down the line, I’m sure I’ll find a balance of what’s excessive and what works for me. Who knows, though, maybe someday I will do none of this! I must say, having this sort of overview of time passing is existentially unpleasant at times. ↩ It’s a screen-free activity I can draw as well as write It’s more enjoyable to pick a favourite pen and ink to write with Flipping through a journal both brings back memories faster, and is more pleasant to look back on. It’s searchable Note embeds ("rolling up notes") Using Dataview to query your vault Every day, create a daily note (Obsidian does this automatically for me, with a template). In that template, fill out what happened in the day under the heading. At the beginning of a week, I create a week template that embeds every day for that week. By the end of the week, I have a summary view of what happened in a week. Once the week is over, I write up a of that week, which will then get pulled into the monthly note’s template. And then do this for a year! I write everything into a paper journal with lovely crisp paper, and my favourite pen. I can add doodles and drawings, and spend time releasing what happened in a day onto paper, without having to look at a screen Maybe once a month, I scan a month’s worth of notes, run them through a handwriting recognition script and send the contents into each day note in obsidian to keep that system running smoothly too. I must say, having this sort of overview of time passing is existentially unpleasant at times. ↩

writing Writing
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Weakty 4 months ago

Pushing my design sensibilities

I have been thinking about the evolution (or lack thereof) of my design sensibilities—mostly in my job, but also writ large. Sometimes it feels like I've gotten "this far" with a set of design sensibilities that are built on what you shouldn't do rather than what you can do (what can be done but the infinite?). If you have the opportunity to hang around with a few passionate designers for months or even years, it doesn't take too long to absorb what you should really avoid. It seems that I sometimes hear people who work in design discuss bad design just as often as, if not more than, good design. As a result, I know about some of the nuances of typography and layout, colour, imagery, iconography. But I don't know what the next steps are to take my skills beyond that. When I think of design, I think of art. The lines between the two can be fuzzy. I've been content to think (read: trick myself) that as I continue to expose myself to new art as well as to continually practice drawing that I'll also passively improve as a designer. What a nice idea. But I've neglected to actually go looking for texts and other resources that could inform me both academically and experientially in terms of the world of design. A part of me believes that design is something that you build through experience, both by creating lots of bad designs, but also by observing things. Just like getting better at drawing faces requires observation from life. You can study these things from a book all you like but until you get mileage, you’re just working with a set of thoughts that float around in the ether of your mind. The best designers I know are extremely observant. Like being a good listener, being a good observer takes nuance, practice, and patience. It means being present and making note of things whether they are pleasant or unpleasant as you interact with them both actively and passively. Sure, you can read books like Don't Make Me Think or The Design of Everyday Things , among others. And that will inform you. But, like most skills, practice, I think, comes first. More often than not, design shows up in the form of redesigning my website. It’s fun and a stress-reliever for me. And yet every time I do this, it kind of comes out the same. I'm not sure what boundary I need to push to get farther, here. It leads me to believe that I need to not just try to redesign my website over and over and over again, but actually pick something new that is far different from that and make mistakes there. I recently purchased Affinity Publisher to start to branch into book and print design. I think that will push me in a good direction. Despite what I said about resources vs garnering experience, if you have some favourite design resources, don’t hesitate to share them with me.

design Design career Career
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Weakty 4 months ago

Signs of Positivity in Toronto

Signs of positivity have been hiding in plain sight around a few neighbourhoods in Toronto. I've been seeing these signs for at least a year, perhaps longer. Now that I'm back in the season of running and training for a race in the fall, I've started to re-notice these signs and have decided to document them, snapping photos of them whenever I pass them on my runs. When you get up close the signs depict a series of images that feel very positive to me. Some of them visually sound out their message. Some of the pieces are more abstract and leave me wondering. What are "eyes + ears"? Does it mean, Look and Listen ?. I'm particularly fond of the rendering of the moon (middle photo of the collage above). Look at the moon. Gaze in awe at it. It's a taste of wonder and intrigue, bolted up and waiting for those passing by slowly enough to notice. I extracted the GPS data from the photos and plotted the locations with yellow diamonds on the map below. By the end of my running training I hope to find a few more.

data-visualization Data Visualization
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Weakty 5 months ago

The Manga of Taiyo Matsumoto

When I was a kid, someone in my family rented Spirited Away . I loved it. I hadn’t even known the name of the movie when I sat down to watch it. I was mesmerized. Afterward, I don’t think I ever asked, or thought to ask, if there were other movies by the same director. Years and years passed before I was able to put a name to that magical movie I had seen, but the story, the animation, everything about it sat waiting in my mind to be rediscovered. It wasn't until some 10 or 15 years later that I saw Spirited Away for the second time and it all came back to me in a rush. There was an indelible impression it had left on me and my childhood memory. It was an amazing feeling, and I followed that up by watching every single Studio Ghibli film I could get my hands on one christmas break during university. A similar thing has since happened with Taiyō Matsumoto's work. When I was probably 15 or 16, I watched Tekkonkinkreet with a friend. I remember her excitedly showing me the DVD case and me feeling somewhat skeptical. The drawings on it looked not as polished as other cartoons or as-of-yet-unnamed-magic-films I had seen somewhere in my distant past. Still, we watched it and I was stunned. I never followed up on it. I didn’t even know that movies like Tekkonkinkreet were based on manga . 
Needless to say, here I am, again, more than ten years later, diving deep into the oevre of Matsumoto, reading pretty much every comic I can get my hands on. Thankfully, the library where I live is well stocked with his works, and in the past year, I've read Ping Pong, Gogo Monster, No. 5, Sunny, Cats of the Louvre, Tokyo these days , and I’m saving a re-read of Tekkonkinkreet for last. There's something unique about Matsumoto’s work that is inspiring and engaging for me. His drawing style is different from most manga comics I’ve read. It's loose yet refined and energetic; I have read that he draws freehand (which I think means that he's just drawing straight with ink on paper?). I was surprised by how “unpolished” his work felt in comparison to others— sometimes even seemingly childish (although for certain works, this is done to an intentional effect (see No. 5 and GoGo Monster )). As time passed and I read more of his work, I realized that such adjectives were crude and ill-fitting. I’m often struck by characters that are drawn "reductively" with scrunched up faces, are “out of proportion”, or simplified. I think part of me is in awe of this choice because I’ve regrettably internalized that a published comic should be…not like this? Over the years of studying drawing and thinking about getting "better" at drawing, I haven’t even thought about the stylistic choices to render something in a scrappier way. Of course, with Matsumoto’s work, these occasional "scrappy" panels are in juxtaposition to unquestionably polished and impressive panels. I suppose seeing this gives me a liberating feeling toward what comics can be. As usual, there are no rules .  Taiyō Matsumoto’s works feature flowing narratives that can be both fast-paced and temperate. What’s more, his works span several genres: sports, fantasy, slice-of-life, dystopian fiction, coming-of-age, among others. Works like Gogo Monster, Ping Pong, Sunny, and Tekkonkinkreet have a throughline of coming-of-age / childhood adversity, but all works seem to have a flush cast of characters where, by the end of the work, you feel like you’ve left an entire world behind. 
I recommend you take a moment to get into his work. There are so many interesting books that he's created. Some are quite fantastical, and others are slice-of-life, and I love all of it. I’d recommend starting with Ping Pong Vol. 1. Growing up, I really didn’t like comics. Anything with superheroes turned me off. They were too stark, complicated, and visually overwhelming. If I had known I could have read a comic about a young, melancholic ping-pong star when I was a kid, well, I’d probably have read all of Matsumoto’s works much earlier.

culture Culture media Media entertainment Entertainment
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Weakty 5 months ago

Abundant Curiousity

Periodically, I will find my mind brimming with ideas I want to explore. The ideas range in scope and more often than not they are hobby-oriented and related to creating something. Sometimes I find this abundance of things swirling around in my head pretty overwhelming. I've noticed that in response to this barrage of ideas and inspiration, I often end up writing everything that's interesting to me down as a list. I go from a jumbled web of disparate points to a list of things, like a train passing by. Each train car might be related or different in appearance, but at least I can look at them in sequence and clarify my thoughts. I find that just writing things down like this is healthy and helpful for me. At first, I found it a little odd and a little bit discouraging; I would end up with a list with all these things that I wanted to do, and I knew that realistically, I wouldn't do most of them.

writing Writing
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Weakty 5 months ago

Radio Silence - An Unfinished Playdate Game

About 8 months ago, I started building my second game for the Playdate. The working title was "Black Hole" (later to be renamed "Radio Silence") and the idea was simple: you are a crew member in a spaceship that needs to enter a black hole. And so you orbit around the black hole, collecting raw materials from space debris, which you then use to craft items to help you successfully enter and cross through a black hole without getting crushed (Yes, I know that it's physically impossible to go through a black hole, but this is also a fictional game). When I started this game, I was coming off the momentum of having finished my first game for the Playdate, which was a success beyond my expectations (people actually paid for it!). I was determined to keep up that momentum. This time around I wanted to build something different. Whereas my first game used the Pulp game engine on the web, I now wanted to use Lua and to build something that was conceptually simpler—less of a story, and more of an arcade game. In the end, I lost steam on this project and have decided to let it go. But first, let me walk you through how far I got and some of the things I learned. As I mentioned, it's an arcade-style game and conceptually has a pretty simple story. The core loop is to collect materials, craft upgrades, and then to descend safely into the black hole. There were a few areas that I could embellish to make it more than this simple game loop, but at the end of the day, there wasn't much more to it than that. I'll walk you through the few main core mechanics that I had to build, show you some screenshots, and share what I enjoyed and disliked about that process. I began by creating a very simple mechanic, the ability for the ship to orbit a black hole and slowly descend into it. I spent maybe a week and a half on this, and it wasn't too complicated. I had to learn a little bit of math and got some help from GPT. In the end, I had a sprite that rotated around another sprite, the first of which would slowly move towards the second. Again, it was a matter of adding collision detection between the two so that when the ship touched the black hole, it would disappear, and the game would be over. But this alone was kind of boring. I needed to introduce some kind of mechanic that would keep the player paying attention, and I also wanted to find some way of using the crank. And so I built a strange little UI that was meant to represent the navigation of the ship to stay in balance with the black hole's orbit. The idea was that as you would rotate the crank, you needed to keep a special nav point in between two closing-in meters. It would get progressively harder as the game moved on, and using the crank, you would have to gently navigate this balance. Eventually, I had something in place so that when you lost control of the nav point's balance, it would cause the ship's health to decrease to a point where if it reached zero, it would fall into the black hole. For a while, I was satisfied with this, and then for a time, I thought, "This isn't very good, let's remove it." And then a few months later, I brought it back again. So I was feeling a little fickle about this feature. Before I got to the next large mechanic, I spent a good amount of time on the atmosphere of the game - I made a title screen, intro music, game music, and a generative background with shooting stars. This part was relaxing and fun, but also a place where I could noodle indefinitely. Here was when I played around with adding 1-bit characters from an asset pack I found on itch.io. I figured this could be a fun way to introduce a way of guiding the player on what to do if necessary. From the outset, I knew that I wanted to have a crafting component to this game. What I didn't know was how much work that would take. There is a lot of business logic that's involved in building a crafting system, and this really slowed down the momentum of the game. In fact, it got to a point where I really didn't want to work on it because of this crafting system. Some of the work involved: It was around this time that I started to think to myself, "I don't really want to make a game like this." And I realized that I was losing interest. I did have fun creating the raw materials, the items, and their respective descriptions (which had to be created as PNGs): At the beginning of this project, I started documenting my weekly progress on the game. This literally meant sitting in front of a camera, talking about what I had built, and then combining that with footage of the Playdate, development, and adding some reflections on top of that. I think I had some hopes that this would both a) be interesting, b) provide a record of my progress that I could feel motivated by seeing, and c) maybe get people interested in the game. Pretty typical stuff. While I do enjoy video editing, and I don't actually mind being on camera, I did find that this was pretty tedious by the end. It was taking away from my energy that I could be spending on the game, or really, on other things as well. None of the videos really got many views, just about 100 or so views per video. I was surprised to see that some repeat people would show up and comment and provide feedback as well as encouragement. That in itself is a nice component, especially when you're building something on your own, bit by bit. More importantly, I have a complicated relationship with social media. Mostly, I find participation in it to be a net negative for my life, personally. I felt that if I wanted something to be "successful" by the standards of YouTube, I would have to compromise some of my values on how I would present the content. This would mean creating something that would be oriented around clickbait, and unrealistic catfishing in terms of thumbnails and titles, rather than truly representative of what I want to make. At one point I was asking myself, am I trying to build an audience as fast and as large as possible? Or do I just want to make a game and be able to say I finished a game and here's what I learned? Documenting projects on YouTube doesn't need to be mutually exclusive of those two things, but I think that if any part of me had an interest in reaching more and more people and having a "successful" video, that it really actually just took away from my original intent. It's a tough balance to be sure. I eventually did finish the crafting system. And while I would term it as the motivation killer of the project, it was what came after that made me realize I didn't want to do any more work on this thing. After finishing these mechanics, when I looked at the game, I saw something that was very robotic. There weren't any animations, there wasn't any fluidity or juice as some people refer to it in games. And that was where I started to feel the most defeated. In fact, it wouldn't be too much work to add a few animations to spruce up the game. But something about even just having to learn how the animation class worked in the Playdate just felt insurmountable. I no longer wanted to work on the project. For what the game was, in its simplicity of the game loop, I just didn't feel like the idea and the execution so far merited any more time. Simple as that. If it isn't already pretty clear from this retrospective, there are a few things I would change. I wouldn't make YouTube videos at all. I just don't think it's worth it. While I did enjoy some parts of it, I think that it took away from having the energy to finish the game, and I think that it distracted me and discouraged me. I would have also spent more time brainstorming on what I wanted to build for my next game. While I was proud of myself for not picking the first idea that came into my head (which is what I did for my last game) and while I did indeed brainstorm several possible options, I think I should have spent more time thinking about what I really wanted to build. It's hard to let go of projects, especially ones that you've spent a fair bit of time on (and even more especially, ones that you have publicly discussed). It's hard to let go - but life's a bit too short to spend working on projects that you are toiling through and don't find too much joy in anymore. Thankfully, I learned a lot as I went along. Speaking of life - things are about to change around here anyway — We're having a kid! It's nice to let go of projects to make way for this big change; and this way I have one less unfinished thing floating around in my brain during this period. Someday, when I feel a bit more like I've got my feet under me with parenting, I might scope out something small I can build in the few scraps of time I have after the long (but rewarding) days to come. Will it be a game? Maybe. But maybe it'll be some writing, or drawing. Maybe something with a little less staring at a screen. Building the crafting menu sprite itself Building a means of collecting raw materials (asteroids) Displaying items that you've picked up in a grid Making it so that items that have been acquired can be combined with other items, i.e. creating recipes Showing the recipe once it's been crafted in the right-hand side pane of the menu Implementing the actual effects of that item once it has been crafted

gaming Gaming programming Programming Lua
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Weakty 6 months ago

Countin' Bikes

Today I took part in something called the Pedal Poll, which is a countrywide initiative to count how many people are biking, walking, driving, or using a motorized vehicle across a specific time and place. I counted 993 cyclists in the span of 2 hours. I think I would have gotten that other 7 to get over 1000 if I hadn't accidentally closed the app and had to restart it.

statistics Statistics data-analysis Data Analysis
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Weakty 6 months ago

What do you wish you learned in school?

This is a question I've been thinking about. In fact, I thought about it so much for a few days, I considered interviewing people (lately, I've been enjoying interviewing people, in person). What if I interviewed 100 people and asked them what they wished they had learned in school? What if those people were of all different ages? What if some of them were still in school ?

career Career
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Weakty 6 months ago

How to be inefficient

I've been considering adding more inefficiency in my life. It's time I embraced it. Instead of trying to be a finely tuned, get-things-done-machine, I could be a bit more human and exist between my tasks. Our careers shape our lives. Being a programmer for the last 10 years has shaped my life. Primarily, it has lured me into optimizing my personal life: Creative projects. Personal admin. Relationships. Content. Time. Time is one of those things that I try to optimize. Only in the last few years have I really begun to question the driving force behind that engine.

career Career
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Weakty 6 months ago

Say hello to Clydesdale

Some exciting changes have come to my Brodie bike. A couple months ago, I purchased a Clydesdale fork. It was a bit of an impulsive buy. I had recently bought my Bullit, and perhaps having already spent a lot of money, it was easier to continue spending money on bikes. Previously, I had been daydreaming about getting an Omnium someday. I had no idea that there already existed cargo forks that allowed you to convert existing bikes to be able to carry more weight with a fork that had a platform built into it . Now, are these bikes as capable as cycle-trucks where the platform is welded to the frame itself, à la the Omnium Mini or Soma Tradesman ? No, but they are a compromise I’m willing to take instead of buying a whole 'nother bike. While the Crust Clydesdale fork is not cheap, it’s a fork that can be moved from one bike to another. When my Brodie eventually wears out (if ever?),I’ll move the Clydesdale to another vintage mountain bike. It may not carry cargo as well as a cycle-truck, but anything it can’t handle will go onto the Bullit anyway (yes, this sounds like me justifying my purchases). Anyway, the story goes like this: I put in an order for the Clydesdale, which was out of stock at the time, and when it came in, I purchased it without too much hesitation. Originally, I decided that I would do the rest of the job on my own as DIY as I could. I spent about a month looking for a 20-inch wheel that would work for the Clydesdale. I perused around the co-op, Kijiji, and Facebook marketplace with no luck. It would have been possible, probably, to use a kid's bike, but I didn't go much farther down that road. All the while, time ticked away. I wasn't making a lot of progress, and we've got a significant change coming with a baby on the way. The free time to scrounge parts and go the DIY route was running out. So I eventually caved and brought the bike right on back to my local bike shop, where I purchased the fork and asked them to slap it all together with a BMX wheel they sourced for me. They did this in short time, and I picked it up today. I've been pretty excited about this as much as I love the Bullit already. I do want some kind of lighter (and shorter!) commuter that can still carry a lot of weight. Every day, I carry a backpack with at least 15lb in it, and it gets a bit precarious in my current Wald basket. Having this fork platform will probably give me the concessions that I want. I won't have to lug around a massive cargo bike, but I can also get like the support I need to carry heavier stuff. In true MOBIB style, I awkwardly mounted the bike I rode to the bike shop onto the Clydesdale and rode it home (thanks for the help, Alex!). It was definitely an unwise decision. Nobody got hurt, but it could have been a pretty dicey move if the bike had flown off the fork. Stay tuned for the 6-month review!

hardware Hardware open-source Open Source
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Weakty 7 months ago

How to be brief

Recently, I cooked up a little project where I interviewed a few of my friends and put it together into a short video. Watching the footage back, I realized that they are all more to-the-point than me. I'm mostly okay with that, but this also isn't the first time that I've been confronted with my long-windedness. This is also not the first time that I've thought, hey, I'd like to be able to say what I'm thinking and it not take half an hour. What does it take to be more brief? Why is it important to me? And why has it been hard before?

writing Writing
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Weakty 7 months ago

5-4-3-2-1

Have you heard of the 5-4-3-2-1 method? It's a mechanism for connecting to the present tense, especially for dealing with anxiety and overwhelming emotions. It goes like this: Ask yourself what are five things you can see right now? What are four things you can hear? What are three things that you feel? What are two things that you smell? What is one thing that you taste? I have found it particularly useful when I have found myself swirling in thoughts of anxiety and worry. It does slow the moment down, and if there's one thing I want these days, it is to slow down a moment. Now, not to be particularly facetious, but what if the five things you see are problematic? What if the four things you hear grate against your ears? What if the three things you feel rub you the wrong way? What if the two things that you smell are putrid and toxic? What if the one thing you taste leaves a bitter taste in your mouth? Perhaps, then, it is time to take direct action; sometimes taking action is the antidote to despair. .

programming Programming Mental Health ai AI
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