Site updates
- Wiki comments – I’ve enabled guest commenting, so now if you don’t want to register with Disqus, you can just type in your name and email address to comment like you do on the blog.
Project updates
- Math relearning – It’s almost unbelievable, but I’ve uploaded actual code to my project on Github, though it isn’t much, only the beginnings of the command line interface and the tests, but it works, and it’s taught me the basics of several tools, including the literate programming tool I’m using. This week I’ll set up the installation script and update the readme file, and then I’ll be ready to teach my program to count!
- GTD – I need another project to fill the times when it’s awkward to program, but my attention is very scattered right now, and I can’t settle on one, so I’m taking the opportunity to revisit GTD, starting with the horizons of focus, which let you put your tasks in a broad context and prioritize them based on your goals and values. I use Nirvana as my main task manager, and in addition to prioritizing my projects I want to clean out my old tasks and tune up my task managing routine.
- Life maintenance
- Diet – I seem to be balancing things better now. Now that things have calmed down, I’m going to drop this category from my updates until something interesting happens.
- Exercise – I think getting to bed on time really will be the key to getting back into regular morning walks, neither of which has happened yet, but I managed to walk a couple of times last week.
- Daily routine – My sleep schedule is still chaotic, but I think the key here will be awareness of my mental habits, which I suspect will be helped by training myself to think through my evening at the end of the workday.
- Housekeeping – I’m trying the technique of cleaning up a little at a time, basically making each room a little neater whenever I leave it (yes, my apartment has rooms, even though it’s a studio), and it’s helping.
- Media
- Music – I’ve been collecting more cyberpunk music for reading my Cyberpunk 2020 manual and contemplative music for taking dusk photos, and the songs I’ve had on repeat are “From Here We Move Forward” by Carolino and “#19 [Stone in Focus]” by Aphex Twin, which both go well with the Ellis book I’ll tell you about next.
- Books – I finished Mixed Up Files, got through Randall Munroe’s What If?, and now am back onto The Magic Thief with book 3, Found. I also found a new author to try, Bret Easton Ellis, and I checked out from the library his first novel, Less Than Zero, which so far is about the emptiness of college-age Hollywood life, which goes with my current existentialist themes. Along with that I checked out Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, which I’ve had in mind for a while, since it’s annoying to be into a genre abstractly without actually reading much of it.
- Movies – After several months I was finally able to check out and watch The Garden of Words, a short and beautiful anime about a relationship between two strangers in a park. The art was pretty much what I was hoping for, with many picturesque shots of quiet corners of everyday life. I haven’t decided yet whether I want to own it, and I’ll probably watch some more slice-of-life animes before I settle on my favorite examples to collect.
- Politics – This election has turned my attention back to politics, which I was surprised anything could do, and I’ve even joined a class at church about politics and faith, whereas I normally avoid all church classes, so I guess Trump is good for something. As usual I’m handling my confusion by buying books, in this case Five Views on the Church and Politics, Political Theory by Andrew Haywood, and The Voting Booth by Skye Jethani. My confusion comes down to deciding on one of my non-Trump voting options, which include not voting.
- Dusk – Last week this photo sparked an adventure.
A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on
The camera exaggerated the sky’s gradient, but I really like the effect.
A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on
A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on
A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on
I’ve always imagined what kind of wake of disaster would ensue if a water tower were to fail catastrophically. Instant Tsunami!
A certain subdivision would have a lot of basement problems! While I was Googling water towers, I saw this story about a guy arrested for shooting a hole in one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxdyTIvpuOo
The water tower is a little creepy.
Will have to look for The Garden of Words.
Even if you choose not to vote in the presidential race, you should still vote—there are plenty of other actually important races on the ballot! In Denver, for example, we’re voting on funding for schools and the Science and Cultural Facilities District, as well as a number of important state constitutional referenda.
Yeah, that’s what I had in mind.