Some Things I Learned in 2024

A friend showed me Simple, Non-Commercial, Open Source Notes. (Warning, this video will berate you for 30 minutes.) My values are different from the author’s, but I appreciate their methodical(??) approach to articulate their needs and explore the solution space of digital note-taking systems. Here, I do some of the same. Composing and Editing I...

Warnings: This topic, personal eating habits, is tired. Anything I could say, a different nerd has said better. I currently eat meat but try to avoid eating mammals, which I learned today is called mafism. I’m a mid-30s knowledge worker who lives with a partner. We share some meals spontaneously but don’t plan around it, each keeping our own...

It seems that you want my help making a personnel decision? Sadly, I have little to say about the agent who answered my phone, email, or chat inquiry. They appeared to be a competent human. If I was unknowingly interacting with an LLM, you did a great job fine-tuning it. While I’d have preferred someone with forensic troubleshooting skill and...

I sponsor development of technologies that answer to their users’ own interests, rather than the interests of megacorps (who harvest users’ data and attention, extract rents, impose lock-in, and so on). I particularly support indie developers who are heading upstream of their own economic incentives. I also support some creative work like music...

Book clubs for professional development are not new, but nothing like this exists at my employer or in my city, so I guess I’ll start one. What does “Effective” mean? Borrowing from another group 1, I’ll say whatever it means to you. 2 And “Technologist”? Someone who builds or wields technology as a career. It’s a big tent including software and...