Blog

• Testing
  12 Feb 2018 | notes thoughts internet draft
  

  The world, it is said after a chance encounter with someone we know, is small. In the physical world this is proven consistently true. I have lived in cities for the majority of my adult life, where I'm constantly exposed to hoards of people in public places. This all but guarantees these types of chance encounters. In San Francisco, hardly a week goes by where I don't run into someone I know or at least recognize. In New York City this happened too--not as regularly, but still with a surprising amount of frequency. These events extend beyond my hometown and into the world at large, too. When I was traveling in Europe, I ran into two people I went to college with in the middle of a town square in Vienna, Austria. When I was backpacking in Colombia, I met someone that I didn't previously know but could have: she was about my age and wearing a t-shirt I also owned (and even had with me, one of three t-shirts I carried in my backpack that trip). The t-shirt said "Westside Market," a grocery store it turned out we were both overly fond of on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.



• Finding Flow
  12 Feb 2018 | technical flow psychology
  

  I was able to connect with a family friend here the other day, and he gave me a lot of good ideas for things to do in Medellín. It also feels good to “know” someone here…I have met many people, but knowing someone in the sense that I can call them up anytime and they will keep track of me is a nice feeling to have. I may also contact a friend of mine’s cousin, who of all things is a doctor here, so I could see that being really beneficial as well. What’s especially nice is that I didn’t even know I had these connections in Medellín, it was only after I chose to come here that I found this out. It’s amazing to me that even in a relatively obscure city in a pretty infrequently traveled to part of the world (at least for Americans), I’m only two degrees separated from some people who live here. Cliche, but it demonstrates how connected and small of a world it really is.



• A Small World
  28 Dec 2016 | notes thoughts internet draft
  

  ** DRAFT **

  The world, it is said after a chance encounter with someone we know, is small. In the physical world this is proven consistently true. I have lived in cities for the majority of my adult life, where I'm constantly exposed to hoards of people in public places. This all but guarantees these types of chance encounters. In San Francisco, hardly a week goes by where I don't run into someone I know or at least recognize. In New York City this happened too--not as regularly, but still with a surprising amount of frequency. These events extend beyond my hometown and into the world at large, too. When I was traveling in Europe, I ran into two people I went to college with in the middle of a town square in Vienna, Austria. When I was backpacking in Colombia, I met someone that I didn't previously know but could have: she was about my age and wearing a t-shirt I also owned (and even had with me, one of three t-shirts I carried in my backpack that trip). The t-shirt said "Westside Market," a grocery store it turned out we were both overly fond of on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.



• The Shared World
  27 Dec 2016 | poetry
  

  Gate A-4

  A poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, 2008



• Constitutions
  22 Dec 2016 | constitution sentiment analysis data text data viz draft
  

  I’m starting a new data vis project on some of the world’s constitutions. Coupled with sentiment analysis tools, I think I could dig up some interesting insights. This is where I’ll post my findings.



• The Language of SF Real Estate
  18 Dec 2016 | san francisco data real estate language data viz draft
  

  This weekend I embarked on a small data visualization project. I chose to look at San Francisco real estate listings to try to find interesting trends and relationships. Much has been covered on affordability, rising prices, and housing regulations, but I wanted to look through a different lens. I’ve always been curious about the use of language in real estate listings–it varies widely in type, style, grammatical correctness, and overall effect. My hypothesis was that there would be a detectable relationship between the language of a real estate listing and its asking price and geographical location. More specifically, I hypothesized an inverse relationship: listings with lower asking prices would contain more verbose and emotional language. I believed there would be a sort of “compensatory” effect at play, where less desirable listings are bulked up with more forceful language; their location and property alone wouldn’t speak (as loudly) for themselves.



• The Philosophy of Work
  16 Dec 2016 | work philosophy draft
  

  Work has been on mind my lately. Not the specifics of my own job, but rather the abstract concept of work. We here in the US of A take a very ambivalent stance towards it, and even in these polarized views (view 1: work is honorable, it gives us meaning and purpose, you can be remunerated generously for it, the greater work ethic you have the better, etc. and view 2: work is, well, laborious, work is dreaded, work gives us the Sunday blues, work is what we do for the weekend, etc.) there are subleties and nuances. The philosophy of work is complicated, to say the least.



• Deciding What to Work On
  05 Dec 2016 | work procrastination creativity
  

  Deciding what to work on is a luxury, but one I try to take seriously. It implies that a) you have the ability to choose what to do and b) you have a skill set that is not so specifically tailored to one type of work, but rather a skill set that allows you to work on a variety of tasks.



• The Monolith
  05 Dec 2016 | computers humanity machines television
  

  I just watched an interesting scene in Mad Men, season 6, episode 7, “The Monolith.” Don has returned to the office after a leave, and finds that more than just the relationships around him have changed. More notably, Sterling Cooper & Partners has decided to buy a computer, and the office is undergoing construction and renovation as they ready the space for the new machine. Don and Lloyd, the IBM project manager have a conversation:



• Barthelme on Words
  22 Nov 2016 | words language art
  

  Donald Barthelme on words



• AI and Gender
  14 Nov 2016 | ai gender future intelligent assistants draft
  

  There is a new paradigm for how we interact with technology that will replace (or at least supplement) internet and mobile device browsing : intelligent assistants. Intelligent machines that recognize your voice, with whom you can speak or send messages. They will be able to learn your preferences, feed you information, play you music, send you reminders, book dinner and travel reservations, and more.



• Programming for Non-Programmers
  13 Nov 2016 | command line terminal code programming work
  

  Since learning to code, I've encountered dozens of concepts and tools that make the job of coding easier and more effective. But many of these concepts and tools could also be used by non-programmers, or to achieve non-programming tasks, and the only reason they aren't is because an artifical wall has been built up around them, and they are falsely considered within the domain of only the "technical" few.



• Wordpress to Jekyll
  12 Nov 2016 | code blogging
  

  How To Bring Your Wordpress Site to Jekyll



• Navigating Stuckness
  01 Nov 2016 | advice art code work
  

  This is from Jonathan Harris’s insightful, instructive, inspirational essay, Navigating Unstuckness. I view it as a guiding principle for my own life, in the decisions I choose to make and the people and things I give my attention to. Like Jonathan, when I was ten I was writing stories and drawing pictures. In a way, this blog is my way to get back to what I was doing then.



• Big O
  30 Sep 2016
  

  In computer science, Big O notation (also known as Time/Space Complexity) is used to “classify algorithms by how they respond to changes in input size, such as how the processing time of an algorithm changes as the problem size becomes extremely large.” In other words, Big O is a measure to indicate how efficiently an algorithm performs in its worse case as the data it processes grows. An algorithm that performs well (i.e. quickly, with minimal space requirements) under one set of conditions may perform differently (i.e. worse) under a different set of conditions. Big O attempts to quantify that difference.



• Mural
  15 Feb 2016
  

  I decided to create Sol Lewitt’s [Wall Drawing 797](https://www.artsy.net/artwork/sol-lewitt-wall-drawing-number-797) on a big, empty wall in my new bedroom...



• Links
  03 May 2015
  

  My motivation to write original content for this blog waxes and wanes throughout the week. I always have ideas written down in notebooks or swirling around in my head. I often have a thought or idea or observe something interesting and think, “Hey this would make a great blog post. I’ll do that later tonight.” As is apparent with one scroll through my blog, I rarely follow through. As a stopgap until I conjure up some more motivation, here are some links to original content written elsewhere on the internets by people evidently more motivated than me:



• April 2015 Reading List
  01 May 2015
  

  What I read in April:



• Bike Commute
  06 Apr 2015 | bike bikecommuting commuting gym monday workout
  

  In spite of it being Monday morning, I’m feeling super giddy. I’m lucky to work with a really awesome guy who is as into the idea of biking to work as I am. We’re going to work on a space in the office to store the bikes safely, since there isn’t really one at the moment. So that means I can start riding my bike to work! It’s a 7.5 mile ride each way and should take about 45 minutes. It’ll also obviate the need to workout after work! Something I often dread, even though I love, even when I hate.



• Travel
  05 Apr 2015 | travel airfare logistics
  

  I have been seriously nerding out on travel and all its intricacies the past couple weeks. Other than a trip next week to visit my family in Houston, I don’t have any trips planned, but I still find it fascinating. I’ve learned a lot about frequent flyer miles, travel hacking, how to find the cheapest airfare, the history of commercial air travel, hidden city ticketing, how airlines set ticket prices, the different types of airplanes, and a whole lot more. I read Cockpit Confidential in about a day, and now I’m in the middle of The Travel Detective, for which I had low expectations (because I mean, look at that cover), but turns out is pure gold. I stumbled upon it in the travel section at the Brooklyn Library. I also picked up The Best American Travel Writing (2011 edition) and The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton (I highly recommend his Architecture of Happiness, which isn’t a self-help book like the title suggests but is actually about architecture and the impact of design and the built environment on our psyche, which is clearly my cup of tea).



• March 2015 Reading List
  20 Mar 2015 | reading creativity
  

  I’ve spent a whole lot more time reading/consuming than writing/creating this past month. I’ve been keeping up with my morning pages, for the most part, but beyond that, I’ve been feeling a little creatively blocked. So, when pressed for content, what better way to churn out material than to compose a list, right? So here’s what I’ve read this past month, in chronological order:



• Ineffable
  15 Mar 2015 | music language
  Let sounds be themselves rather than vehicles for man-made theories or expression of human sentiments.– John Cage


• I Can See
  13 Mar 2015 | awareness
  

  Something strange and awesome happened to me the other night on the walk home from the subway to my apartment. There was something different about my surroundings. The most obvious and quantifiable difference was the temperature; for the first time this year, it felt warm. It was around 9:15 pm, so it was dark, but having just been Daylight Savings, there was still a lightness about it. I crossed Franklin Ave. and rounded the corner, heading west on Union Street as a small brigade of police officers passed me by.



• Dig Within
  09 Mar 2015 | reading books stoicism
  

  I just finished “The Obstacle is the Way,” a fascinating and informative read on how to apply Stoic philosophy to everyday life and its challenges. It’s a great introduction to Stoicism and got me interested in digging deeper into the work of the Stoics. I’ve been intermittently reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations (intermittently because I find it to be easy to pick up and put down at choice moments in life without feeling lost, and I’m guaranteed to render something useful out of it) and found some gems I really love, included below. I want to print these out and plaster them on my wall:



• Good Design is Everywhere
  05 Mar 2015 | design stuff
  

  Yesterday after work I was walking to the downtown 6 getting soaked and splashed by the wintry mix of the day. This should have been unpleasant: it was cold and wet and dreary out, it was rush hour, and I just wanted to get to the gym. It wasn’t, though. And I have good design to thank for that.



• Texperiments
  28 Feb 2015 | tech apple
  

  I have a bad case of (self-diagnosed) tech ADD. Even when I love some device, and it’s working great for me (read: my Macbrook Pro), I still want to try what else is out there. I’ve experimented with PC’s (Lenovo and Samsung) and I’ve experimented with the Macbook Air. Nothing has compared to my Macbrook Pro Retina 15″ in any regard. This affliction applies to other devices as well. For listening to music, I’ve tried my iPhone, an iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, and Sansa Sport Clip (which, for ~$40, tiny, and clippable, I highly recommend for workouts). I can easily get drawn in to the newest and shiniest. I don’t consider myself materialistic in any other way except this. And maybe bags.



• Slow
  23 Feb 2015 | running
  

  I used to run pretty seriously (my definition of serious: following training programs and running a few half marathons), and then I used to run less seriously (running a few miles, a few times a week), and then I stopped running altogether (no miles, none whatsoever). I gave myself permission to stop and so I did. “It’s tough on the joints,” I’d say. “There are more efficient ways to get in shape,” I’d say. But now I say nonsense. My joints feel fine, and it’s been a great way—for me—to get in shape and feel both physically and mentally better. So I’m trying to get back into it, because as much as I love cycling and rowing, there is no better exercise I can regularly perform to get that full-body feel-goodness. And no, burpees hurt too much, therefore they don’t count.



• Scandinavian Literature
  13 Jul 2013 | scandinavia books reading
  

  Since I casually gleaned over the Comp Lit section of my course catalog senior year, where I noticed but didn’t give much thought to a class offering on Scandinavian literature, my radar has sharpened on this particular, peculiar breed of writing. The class was called COMP 212 (S)Nordic Lights: Literary and Cultural Diversity in Modern Scandinavia. Here is a clip from the course description:



• Año Nuevo
  02 Jan 2013 | bogota travel
  

  Que pena. I’ve been horrible at keeping this thing going, and for the wrong reasons. I have the time, the pictures, and the thoughts, but as soon as I get behind, I’m faced with the too overwhelming task of editing photos, selecting the best ones, uploading them slowly and individually, and then writing about them. So a week passes and the thought of undergoing this process frightens me, so I let another week pass and the cycle continues. But that is not to mean I don’t think about writing (I do all the time, every minute of every day), and I haven’t forgotten about the few of you who read this thing. I even had a dream the other night that I renamed my blog “One Post a Week.” On its face that doesn’t sound too ambitious, but in truth it’s still woefully inaccurate of how frequently I’ve been checking in. So, I’m going to take that dream to portend one of my New Year’s resolutions, and will strive to keep at such a (not so) rapid clip.



• Movimiento
  21 Dec 2012 | travel bogota
  

  Moving on, settling down This week has been a whirlwind. After saying goodbye to friends in Salento, taking a couple days off in Armenia, and then embarking on the 9-hour bus ride to Bogota, I feel like the general trajectory of my time here has completely shifted. I initially didn’t want to go to Bogota. I had heard only the bad things, and that combined with a day-long bus ride in the opposite direction of where I was headed (southwards, to Ecuador), produced a real sense of dread in me. Finally, after putting it off for three mornings, I sucked it up, bought the bus ticket, and headed eastwards, thinking that through all my time in Colombia and all my raving about it, I should at least check out its capital.



• Fotos Dos
  05 Dec 2012 | travel coffee photography
  

  Faithful readers,



• Fotos
  18 Nov 2012 | travel coffee photography
  

  More photos! Presented chronologically:



• Piensas
  16 Nov 2012 | travel medellín
  

  A Few Observations



• Time Abroad
  13 Nov 2012 | colombia travel time
  

  I’ve been here eleven days, but it feels like eleven months. Time passes slowly here. Not in that any given hour or block of time feels particularly long. But in each day I manage to fit in many different things, all of them brand new to me, and still manage to have a lot of time to relax, read, and sleep. By “different things,” I don’t necessarily mean sight-seeing or some other fun activity. Sometimes it is that, but usually it’s the simple act of say, buying groceries, finding a bookstore, making a phone call. Even the mundane things here have a new and unfamiliar aspect to them, and unlike at home, where I can go about my day without giving it much thought, doing the same thing here requires 100% of my mental capacity. Being so conscious of every little thing slows time down. So, if anyone is feeling like their life is moving too quickly, I suggest dropping everything and moving to a foreign country.



• Más Medellín
  08 Nov 2012 | medellín travel
  

  Medellín: Mountains, Metrocables, Museums and more



• Fotografía
  05 Nov 2012 | photography colombia travel
  

  Presenting you with the first few photos of Colombia that I’ve (surreptitiously) taken with my iPhone. I hope to break out my DSLR soon enough, but for now, just wanted to quickly give you an idea of the things I’ve been seeing so far:



• Medellín
  04 Nov 2012 | colombia medellín travel
  

  I arrived in Medellín, Colombia yesterday, and have spent the past 30 or so hours just trying to take everything in. I’ve tried (with an approximate 65% success rate) to participate in the daily activities of a Colombian. I went to a supermarket and stocked up on groceries. I went out to dinner, took the metro, and worked out at a gym this afternoon. After that, I wandered about and went to a soccer game in El Estadio, an incredible sports complex with the best views I’ve experienced thus far–beautiful mountains in view in every direction you look. Basically, I’ve been trying to get a handle on how one conducts life in a South American city. It could be because I haven’t started working yet, or because I came straight from New York, but things move at a much more leisurely pace here. I’m not quite accustomed to that yet–still trying to cross the street with a blinking red light, still trying to schedule every aspect of my day, still obsessing over maximizing efficiency when going about my errands–but I think I’ll eventually adjust.



• Black History Month in Brooklyn
  02 Feb 2011 | patch nyc prospect heights
  

  Note: this was originally published for Prospect Heights Patch here



• A History of NYT Recipes
  21 Jan 2011 | journalism nyc food
  

  Note: this was originally published for the Prospect Heights Patch news site here