Update for 10/29/2017

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Andy

This week I’m trying to be briefer, especially since the update is already so late.

Worship team

🙂

I’ve been moved from piano to synth for at least the next few months. We have too many pianists. At first I felt like I’d been demoted, but now I see that’s not the idea, and I’m having fun with it.

Podcasts

🙂

I’m going to be working on a podcast! I volunteered to help with our church’s sermon feed. I’ll be editing and uploading files.

Life management

🙂

They fixed my kitchen sink on Monday. Finally I could get back to normal meals–once I got around to buying new vegetables.

I upgraded my cell phone plan–up from 500 MB a month to 5 G, and for the same price. This will let me do projects that require the Internet when I’m sitting in my car.

Futurism

😎

Last week I met with my new futurism group on the topic of Afrofuturism (based on this episode of This American Life). I learned from someone in the group that Ahmed Best has a fascinating podcast on the subject. He’s the actor who played Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars, and that role is actually what got him interested in futurism.

I finished catching up on Isaac Arthur’s past episodes. The next set of videos to finish will be from the Future of Humanity Institute. But first, some audiobooks.

Books

🙂

I finally convinced myself to subscribe to Audible. It’ll fill in for my local libraries when the audiobooks I want aren’t easily available. Audiobook apps are hit or miss, but I was relieved to find Audible has a good one.

For my first Audible selection, I decided to do some Halloween listening. I’ve been in the mood for something along the lines of Peter Clines’ 14, so I’m listening to its sidequel, The Fold. If you like sci fi horror adventure mysteries, I recommend it. The reader is good too.

Work

😐

Freelance work has been taking up a few of my evenings. That was supposed to end Friday, but then I got an extra request, so it’s spilling over a little to this week. Then it’s time to stop procrastinating on invoices.

Another evening was taken up by my regular job, pushing myself to finish the complicated ebook I’ve been planning for and working on the past couple of months. My deadline was Friday, but it thankfully got extended to Tuesday, so I had a little more time to fix things.

Project generator

🙂

I fixed the errors Travis CI was complaining about and added a couple more external services to the generator. Now I just have the road map of features to write, and then I’ll be ready to create the first release, v0.1.0.

Beliefs report

😐

I’m still revising the bibliology section.

TV

🙂

I joined the mass binge watch of the newly released Stranger Things 2 on Friday, but only for one episode. I’ll get to the rest of it later.

Netflix removed Foyle’s War from its streaming service a while back, but last week I found it on Hoopla, so now Tim and I can get back to watching it.

Posted in Apartment, Beliefs report, Books, Coding project generator, Futurism, Life management, Podcasts, TV, Weeknotes, Worship performing | 6 Comments

Update for 10/22/2017

Posted on October 25, 2017 by Andy

Life management

😕

My kitchen sink was still leaking on Saturday. I even pestered the office a few days earlier to get someone out to fix it. It was annoying not to be able to do dishes, but I used it as an excuse to eat out more.

One thing slowing the maintenance guy down might’ve been the second power outage we had on Monday. An equipment problem apparently. It wasn’t resolved till mid-morning the next day. I got more sleep Monday night! But it reminded me of this article on the mental health effects of prolonged outages.

I seriously need to establish some routines for my time outside of work. Having my projects crowded out by trivialities all the time is kind of demoralizing. Sometimes I wonder if I should give up on my ambitions and just accept the mundane existence I seem stuck in. But I’m not really capable of settling like that, so I’ll keeping pushing myself toward solutions.

Work

😐

Sometimes my projects are crowded out by work. I don’t really mind occasional interruptions for that. It feels more meaningful than putting up with the inefficiencies of my everyday life. It can add up though.

In my last update I was in the middle of setting up my new hard drive for some freelance work. Well I finished that, and the rest of the job was fairly easy. My brother narrowly missed having to help me slog through compiling that module like he did years ago the first time I compiled it.

Now I’m in the middle of another text comparison job of the same kind, but this one will take extra work for a different reason. The files they sent me have a format my program doesn’t quite read (the concise version of InDesign tagged text rather than the verbose version), so I need to adjust it a bit.

Wednesday afternoon I got an emergency request to fix a hacked WordPress site, so that was my Wednesday night and Thursday morning. It reminded me I have some work to do on my own site.

It’s nice of my clients to pay for all these meals I’ve been eating out lately.

🙂

At my real job we got an emergency request for office people to help out in the warehouse. I signed up because warehouse projects are fun and I felt bad for ignoring the last few requests. It was fun this time too, and I got to talk to some people I hadn’t met from other departments.

Project generator

😐

As usual, I inched forward. I ended the week stuck in Docker trying to figure out how to locally debug my Travis CI tests. Doesn’t that sound like I know what I’m doing?

Beliefs report

😐

I think I have all the content for bibliology basically written. I just need to clean it up a bit, and then I can post the update.

Socializing

🙂

Sunday I went with Jeremy, Heather, and their kid to a pumpkin farm. We didn’t stay long, but we looked around and did some shopping. I was tempted to get a little pumpkin or two for decoration because they looked so nice, but I didn’t think I’d actually do anything with them. I did buy some pumpkin butter and fudge and fed a goat.

Posted in Beliefs report, Coding project generator, Freelancing, Life management, People, Weeknotes, Work | 4 Comments

Update for 10/15/2017

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Andy

I was expecting this to be another short-entry week.

Socializing

🙂

Sunday I played on the worship team at our church’s other site, and afterward they had a lunch of Korean food. I attended this. I wasn’t feeling very social, and at first I was grumpy about agreeing to stay, but I got over it and had a nice time anyway.

I even met someone who works with kids who have autism, which is a topic that interests me. I’m curious about the idea that it’s simply a different, nondysfunctional way of processing the world.

Then on Friday I had dinner with Jeremy, where I got him to argue with me about functional vs. object-oriented programming. More on that below.

Futurism

😎

Tuesday I attended my first event of the futurism group I joined. It had a nicely organized format where we watched a series of videos on a topic with a discussion after each one. The most interesting one to me was Lawrence Lessig’s TEDx talk on money’s stranglehold on politics. I’m already planning on attending the next meeting. This time I’ll bring my tablet, because I ended up taking a lot of notes on my phone.

Work

😄

With the futurism meeting out of the way, I stayed at the office very late Wednesday and Thursday cramming in the rest of my work on the complicated ebook I’ve had on my plate the past few months. I was pushing to finish by the Friday deadline. Until Thursday night when I realized I’d misread the due date and I still had two more weeks. A nice relief!

I also got a request from my old employer for a small freelance project. They wanted the results on Monday. Doable. The only problem was I hadn’t set up my new hard drive yet for that work, so I’d need to give myself some extra time. With everything else going on, I didn’t get to it till Saturday.

Life management

🙄

Life is nothing if not indifferent to our wishes and needs. Saturday morning I was washing dishes and heard a splattering noise under the sink. The end of the pipe had separated from the drain, and the water was splashing out in a big puddle. I cleaned it up and sent a maintenance request.

We had storms pretty much all day. That night while I was trying to set up my freelance work, the storm decided to help out by contributing a power outage. It did have the courtesy to wait till after I’d microwaved my frozen dinner (to save on dirty dishes). It didn’t last as long as I expected, but the experience reminded me I have plans to be less miserly.

After the outage I found that it had corrupted parts of my C drive, so I waited what seemed like an hour while chkdsk fixed it.

That was followed by several hours of installing things on the computer. And then running into the problem I was dreading–having to compile an obscure Perl module that always gave me trouble because I don’t know anything about compiling. Turned out, it still hadn’t changed its ways. I went to bed.

Project generator

😐

As you can maybe see by now, my work on the projects I actually care about was crowded out (again) by other things. But on this one I did make a little more progress on the roadmap.

Beliefs report

😐

I actually wrote a decent amount on my current topic of bibliology, and I’m closing in on posting an update, but Zeno’s paradox continues–closer and closer, but never there. This week isn’t looking especially likely either.

Functional programming

🤓

I’ve been putting off learning functional programming for years. Although XSLT, the language I use to process XML, is more or less functional, I want to learn it for real. And the language I want to learn it from is Haskell, since it’s one of the purer functional languages. The book I want to learn it from is Haskell Programming from First Principles, which has a good reputation for explaining the concepts well. Plus I like anything that starts from first principles. But still I was putting it off.

A few months ago I ran across some videos and articles about the evils of object-oriented programming, and mulling them over since then has gotten me thinking these functional programming thoughts again. So last week I took the plunge, bought the Haskell book, and started reading.

Will I get anywhere with it, or will it be another project I pick up and drop a week later? Tune in next week to find out. But this topic keeps pestering me, so I think the project will stick around.

I have some links to share that will explain better why I want to take the time to learn functional programming. This is to make up for my poor explanation to Jeremy. Instead of delaying this post even longer, though, I’ll put them in a separate blog entry later this week.

TV

😎

Tim and I finished the two-part pilot of Star Trek: Discovery. I was pleased to find that the writing got better after the first half hour, or else I stopped noticing its weakness. I thought they did a good job of establishing the characters. The preview for the rest of the season took the show in a very different direction than I expected. I’m kinda looking forward to it.

While setting up for my freelance work, I watched episode 4 of The Orville. That show continues to be good. It’s not supposed to be a Star Trek series, but I think of it as one anyway, and I actually feel more like watching The Orville than Discovery.

Fundraising

🤔

My friend Paul very kindly made a GoFundMe campaign for his friend Beth so she could get some dental work done. I agreed to share it. I even feel the urge to donate, which makes me think personal connections are an important part of meeting these kinds of needs.

Posted in Beliefs report, Coding project generator, Ebooks, Freelancing, Functional programming, Fundraising, Futurism, Hardware, Life management, People, TV, Weeknotes, Work | 2 Comments

Update for 10/8/2017

Posted on October 9, 2017 by Andy

Death

🤔

I spent about a third of my project time last week refreshing my memory on how to write a sympathy note. If you ever find yourself needing to support someone who’s had a loss, I recommend The Art of Condolence by Leonard and Hilary Zunin.

Life management

😐

Another third of my project time was spent catching up on sleep. The extra sleep and reading some more articles on the subject have turned my attention back to my sleep schedule, and that’s gone pretty well the past few days.

Project generator

😐

I’ve organized the rest of my tasks for this project so it’s not so hazy and intimidating.

Beliefs report

😐

I wrote some more on bibliology, but the update’s still not ready for posting.

Books

🤔

I finished Iron Sunrise. It was good but not really what I was looking for. I’m interested in exploring technological advance and its ramifications for society, and in this series those issues take a backseat to fairly normal politics and adventure.

Pushing myself to finish Iron Sunrise put me in a binging frame of mind, so it didn’t take me long to get through my next audiobook, Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. It seems like I should’ve read that one a long time ago, but I put it off.

Now that I’ve gotten to it, I think it’s a very good exploration of some of the issues they were in a position to consider back in 1950, given that not even personal computers existed. In fact, I think a lot of the issues will remain relevant as the field of AI takes off.

Futurism

😎

Continuing my binging practices, I’ve been plowing through Isaac Arthur’s videos to catch up to his current updates. All his videos are good, but one that stood out last week was on black hole farming. It’s the first in his series on civilizations at the end of time. If you enjoy pondering the fantastic, I recommend it.

Posted in Beliefs report, Books, Caring, Coding project generator, Death, Futurism, Life management, Sleep, Weeknotes | 2 Comments

Update for 10/1/2017

Posted on October 2, 2017 by Andy

Project generator

😐

I’ve been tying up loose ends for the first release and planning my roadmap for the features I want to add.

Beliefs report

😐

I made a lot of progress on the bibliology section, but I didn’t want to rush the update, so I have a bit more to go.

Futurism

🙂

The previous AI meetup group I joined stalled after the first meeting, but last week I found another group on the broader topic of futurism, and it’s been going for about a year, so I’ve joined that one. I’m planning to attend the next meeting that’s in a couple of weeks.

Books

🙂

Experimental literature has been creeping back into my life after a few months of being crowded out. I’m going to try to finish cataloging the authors in The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature by the end of the year.

It turns out the “superbook” concept I was developing pretty much covers the same territory, so I’ll probably merge that article into whatever other experimental literature content I put on the wiki. I always try to connect my work with other people’s, so this correlation was actually a welcome discovery.

TV

🙂

Episode 3 of The Orville was surprisingly good. This show is growing on me. The Moclan writer Gondus Elden makes me want to explore serious literature.

Because of some delays, Tim and I only got through about half of the first Star Trek: Discovery episode, so we’re trying again this week. But my first impression is that the visuals are a lot better than the writing. It seemed like they were dumbing it down for a wide audience. Star Trek series usually take a while to mature, so I’m hoping the writing will catch up to the production values. I especially like the technical drawing theme of the opening credits.

Socializing

🙂

On Sunday our church had a get together for 20s and 30s to start things rolling on a young adult ministry. I only have about six more months in that demographic, and I wasn’t feeling very social that day, but at the last minute I decided to go anyway. My main reason was that if I wanted to voice opinions on what kinds of ministry the church should be doing for people like me, I should see for myself what they’re saying so far.

We were divided into smaller groups by birthday and were led through some icebreaker questions. I ended up talking more than I expected. When the pastor gave an open lunch invitation at the end, I even joined in for that. This was one case where I’m glad I made myself be social.

Video games

🙂

Nintendo has released a new version of the Super Nintendo console from the ’90s called the SNES Classic. They did this with the NES console last year, and it sold out way too quickly. Very frustrating for many gamers. I didn’t care back then, but now I’m more interested in old Nintendo games, so I made sure to preorder this console. I picked it up on Friday.

But my other technology at home is old, and I don’t have any displays with an HDMI port. So Saturday was largely spent finding an adapter and setting up the console. It comes with 21 games installed, including several I’ve wanted to play. When will I play them? It’s anyone’s guess. But I’ve added the whole set to my game backlog.

Death

😔

This weekend I was hit with the news of two deaths. The first was a long-time close friend of the family who died unexpectedly after a brief illness. The second I only learned about because it happened near a part of town I visit a lot, though I wasn’t there till hours later. It was a high-speed car crash, and the victim’s car caught fire. I gathered that she was trapped in her car and burned to death. She was not at fault.

These were sobering stories. They reminded me that while it’s true that “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans,” death can be too. It also brought back the confusion and wrongness I feel as I try to continue with life as usual while tragedy goes on around me. Fortunately there are ways to respond.

Posted in Beliefs report, Books, Coding project generator, Death, Futurism, People, TV, Video games, Weeknotes | 2 Comments

Update for 9/24/2017

Posted on September 24, 2017 by Andy

Project generator

😐

I finally finished my initial pass through the documentation and posted what I have. Next I have some loose ends to tie up, at which point I’ll probably create a beta release, even though I have some other things in mind to add.

Beliefs report

😐

I wrote a bit more on the bibliology section, filling out some details based on my types-of-belief scheme. It’s shaping up pretty well. I might be able to post my revisions this week.

Futurism

🙂

I’m taking a break from my podcasts to catch up on Isaac Arthur’s YouTube channel and the Future of Humanity Institute channel. The podcasts on random topics were good to kickstart my enthusiasm for futurism, but at a certain point I want a more organized, focused, and in-depth look at the issues. These channels are better for that.

Mining Ancient Thought

🙂

I got kind of sidetracked toward the end of the week putting together a page on the wiki I’m calling Mining Ancient Thought. It’s a set of examples I’ve collected over the years of researchers who are reexamining old science and scholarship to gain new insights. It’s part of my principle of looking at a topic from multiple vantage points. In this case, historical ones. In the next week or two I want to write more of an intro, and then I’ll be done with it for now.

TV

🤓

Last week I tried out The Orville, a new space exploration series by a famous comedian whose other shows I’ve barely watched. It’s sort of a dramedy homage to Star Trek. It’s decent light entertainment, and I liked it pretty well. I’m looking forward to seeing how the show handles social issues, which I’ve heard come up in the third episode.

The Orville reminded me that Star Trek: Discovery is on its way, so I looked it up to see when it was supposed to be starting. I thought it was next year sometime. It turned out it starts Sunday. Annoyingly in the US you’ll need CBS All-Access to watch it, but really I don’t mind. Tim’s going to come over and watch the premiere with me.

My excitement over Star Trek has waned over the years, and the stuff I’ve been learning about futurism has made the franchise feel outdated in some ways. But still I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of show this new crop of people comes up with.

Posted in Beliefs report, Coding project generator, Futurism, Mining Ancient Thought, TV | 5 Comments

Update for 9/17/2017

Posted on September 18, 2017 by Andy

Life management

😠

I’ve gotten tired of my slow programming progress, my information overload, my messy apartment, and my messy schedule. It’s time for another round of life organization. I have ideas about this, but I’ll go into them more as I put them into practice.

One thing I’ve already done is cut down on my social media. The news was especially taking up my time. And now I see what people mean about feeling better when they stop reading it.

Computer

🙂

On Saturday I finally got around to replacing my hard drive. A potentially nerve-wracking procedure for a hardwarephobe like me. I was expecting it to take a couple of hours, but it took less than one.

I was also expecting the hardware to be very delicate and highly vulnerable to slight bumps, skin oil, undetectable electric shocks despite my anti-static measures, and mini-disasters I hadn’t even thought of. But to my surprise, when I booted up the computer, I hadn’t ruined my new drive or even the old one.

Now I’m installing software and copying files. Gigabytes and gigabytes of files. Fortunately, I’ve gotten through most of them and the old drive is still alive. My Internet won’t be tied up for whole days downloading my backups after all.

The nice thing about all this is that I’d been seriously needing to clear disk space on that computer. There’s nothing like being forced to do what you wanted.

Project generator

😐

I progressed a few more inches. Enough to see the light at the end of the documentational tunnel.

This project and the one I’m doing at work are good test beds for my latest thoughts on productivity. Some of them might make it onto the wiki.

Beliefs report

😐

I progressed a few inches on this one too. I blame my late blogging last week, which took place at lunch, and the board game I played at lunch on Friday.

Writing

😎

Night Mind, one of the YouTube channels I follow on creepy fiction, has released the first phase of an instructional series called How to Make a Webseries. In it Nick Nocturne distills the lessons he’s learned while creating his own works and watching the creative and not-so-creative projects of others. I recommend it if you’d like to learn about writing fiction in the Internet age.

The videos got me interested in creative writing again. Which is a bad thing!! I need to finish my current projects first. But at least I can ruminate on writing in the back of my mind while it waits its turn.

Posted in Beliefs report, Coding project generator, Hardware, Life management, Videos, Weeknotes, Writing | 1 Comment

Update for 9/10/2017

Posted on September 13, 2017 by Andy

Blog

😎

Some things I’ve learned about emoji:

People use some of them wrong.

You can request new ones.

Work

😐

My current ebook is illustrating the difference between a well-defined procedure and one that involves R&D: One of these schedules can be estimated. The other one seems to actively resist it.

Fortunately, Friday is only a fake deadline, so at this point I’m somewhat putting the idea of a schedule out of my mind. I’ll just program however long it takes to get our tools to do what this ebook needs.

Sleep

🤔

I tracked my sleep for most of the week. The purpose was to get an idea of my sleep patterns. As I suspected, they were wavy–owlish nights of little sleep followed by longer nights of makeup sleep.

I forgot about making a motivational poster. It’d probably be helpful, so I might set aside an evening to put one together. I’m thinking through how I can simplify and order my life better in general. Sleep is one part of that, but I haven’t made many specific plans yet.

Project generator

🙄

This readme is like Zeno’s paradox. The more I get done, the more I’m not any closer to finishing. Still, I made good progress. Maybe it’ll be done this week?

I’m learning that documentation isn’t something you just do. It’s like a research paper. A long and involved process of looking things up and condensing the info into something convenient and readable.

I’m catching a slight case of imposter syndrome with this documentation. I don’t know much of anything about Node.js and Git, yet I have to instruct my readers as if I do.

Annoyingly, my readme work has uncovered more coding I want to do for this release, hopefully only a little, though it’ll take more research. So that’s the next thing to take care of.

Beliefs report

😐

I took a break from this last week. I meant to work on the project generator instead, but I didn’t end up with much time during my lunches, so I ended up just reading my Borges book (see below).

But I don’t want to drift away from the beliefs report altogether, so I’m back to that this week.

Books

😎

I’ve been reading one of my experimental works, a collection of short stories and essays by Jorge Luis Borges called Labyrinths.

I didn’t know what to expect when I started, but now I look forward to each story gradually mapping out an intriguing idea, just enough to lay the groundwork and launch trains of thought. These stories remind me of one of my favorite SF writers, Ted Chiang, who wrote the one that became the movie Arrival. They’re the kinds of stories I could see myself writing.

But I’m putting the book aside again to work on the beliefs report.

TV

🙂

I finished The Defenders. Its predecessor Iron Fist had actually dampened my enthusiasm going into it, but I was relieved that The Defenders drew me in and I liked it much better. It also tied the other series together nicely.

Now I’m trying to take a break from evening media so I can work more on the project generator.

Shoutouts

🙂

My friend Dav has started his own weekly blog. You might recognize the format. I was surprised at how it’s given me extra insight into his life that I hadn’t picked up from our conversations.

Posted in Beliefs report, Blog, Books, Coding project generator, Shoutouts, Sleep, TV, Weeknotes, Work | 5 Comments

Update for 9/3/2017

Posted on September 4, 2017 by Andy

Blog

🤔

I think my long sentences and paragraphs still make up a wall of text that’s hard to read. The contents get lost in all the words. So with this update I’m going to split things up more. The sentences will become paragraphs, and the clauses, for the most part, will become sentences.

If I stick to a set maximum of paragraphs per section (my convention has been four), I should still be able to use the same mental pattern to write. That should constrain my writing enough to keep it manageable.

Sleep

🤔

Still mediocre last week, and I didn’t use my tracking app. But a random web post kicked me in the pants about sleep, so I’ve started tracking. I’m also going to make myself a motivational poster so I don’t forget why I want to sleep.

Work

😊

I finished my big, month-long batch of 16 ebooks Thursday evening. It was going to be 17, but one was canceled, though I had a few preview ebooks thrown in during the month. Thursday evening meant they were on time, so I’m rather proud of myself.

This worked so well I’m planning to process future ebooks in batches. On Friday I organized and typed my procedure. I also created a spreadsheet to estimate the time I’ll need for each step. Setting a deadline for each step was one of the keys to getting it all done on time. It told me when I needed to work faster or later.

This week I’m starting on the complicated ebook that was the reason for last month’s push. When it officially landed on my plate last week, I learned they’d changed the release date. Instead of two weeks to finish it, I have two months. I’m sticking to my original schedule anyway. That way it doesn’t accidentally interfere with other books or projects that get added in that time frame.

Computer

🙄

Sunday I bought the equipment I needed to replace my failing hard drive, but then I put off doing anything with it till Saturday. That evening I spent a slightly harrowing time burning Windows recovery disks. Over and over the file copying failed, and I had to put in another blank disk. But in the end HP pulled through and gave me the three disks I needed.

This week, if I’m not too lazy, I’ll replace the old drive, install Windows on the new one, and copy any files I can from the old to the new. The rest I can download from my online backups.

Project generator

😐

Between working late, scrolling through social media, and watching The Defenders, I actually made more progress on this than I expected. I feel like I’m getting a handle on writing a decent README. But it’s still not ready to post. Maybe this week.

Beliefs report

😐

I made more progress on this one than the project generator. I’m revising the bibliology section to reflect my new organization around types of belief. But I’m starting with my skeptical frustrations, which doesn’t really fit my goal of reassuring my Christian friends. So that’s not ready to post either.

Futurism

😎

Last week’s award for most interesting topic goes to nanotechnology. Famous nanotechnologist Eric Drexler says it will revolutionize manufacturing and transform the material basis of civilization. Looking forward to it!

Honorable mention goes to fundamental physics. In my book it’s not really a futurism topic, but it sufficiently blew my mind to be worth some attention. If you would also like your brain scrambled by knowledge, watch the Origin of Matter and Time playlist from PBS Space Time.

Podcasts

🙂

If you’re interested in the audio description stuff I talked about last week, I found a podcast called Blind Inspiration. It has a few episodes on audio description. The host co-leads training workshops for it, and through the podcast I found a book I might get to learn how it’s done, The Visual Made Verbal by Joel Snyder. Audio description has tight constraints with a focused purpose, depicting visual elements both concisely and precisely. I think that makes it a good writing exercise.

Posted in Audio description, Beliefs report, Blog, Coding project generator, Futurism, Hardware, Podcasts, Sleep, Weeknotes, Work | 1 Comment

Special eclipse report!

Posted on August 29, 2017 by Andy

About a week ago I took a bus down to Tennessee to visit my sister and brother and watch the solar eclipse with them. I took my new 360-degree camera (a Ricoh Theta S) to try to film it. Here are some thoughts and observations from the experience, along with a few pictures I took.

I had a mild but annoying unease through the whole trip up to totality because I figured something would go wrong. Fortunately, pretty much nothing did go wrong. We especially didn’t have a storm, unlike the poor people in South Carolina. We did have a bunch of puffy white clouds that any other day would’ve been a welcome sky decoration. As it was, I eyed them suspiciously whenever we were out.

Totality would occur at 1:27pm. We set out at around noon and picked a nice spot, a little park nearby, and we had a picnic of Jimmy John’s in the muggy heat.

12:51pm. Our eclipse watching spot. My 360-degree camera is ready for its moment. #nofilter #eclipse2017

A post shared by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

The gradually changing light quality and color was one of my favorite parts. It captured my sense of impending unreality. As I mentioned in my post the day before, surreality is pretty much my thing, so I was ready for this.

At around 1:00 our mom called from Texas, where she was watching the partial eclipse. She spotted the crescent shadows on their driveway after we told her about them. I was glad that even though people outside the path of totality missed the most dramatic effects, they could still catch some of them.

Abbie’s friends and their dog, who were also in the park, came by to say hi for a few minutes, and then they returned to their own watching station.

1:03pm. Eclipse crescent shadows. #eclipse2017

A post shared by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

1:08pm. Baby crickets ready for the show. #eclipse2017

A post shared by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

1:19pm. I don’t know if you can tell, but the shadows were fairly sharp, at least the vertical lines. #eclipse2017

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At 1:22 I started filming and left the camera running for just over 10 minutes. Despite the camera’s mediocre resolution, the video turned out pretty well, and I’m glad I went to the effort (ordering the camera, returning the first defective one for a new one, bringing the tripod along, worrying). It turned out to be a nice way to relive the experience without needing to fumble with a camera while it was happening.

With totality approaching in mere minutes, I listened to the “Hymn of Dalamud” from the ominous ending scenes of the MMO Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, where one of the planet’s moons is plummeting through the atmosphere. It fit my mood perfectly! Meanwhile Michael was on his Kindle living through the lunar disaster in Neal Stephenson’s Seveneaves.

1:25pm. #nofilter #eclipse2017

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1:25pm. #nofilter #eclipse2017

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Abbie pointed out a planet off to the west–Venus, I’m sure–but that was the only one we could see. We did see parking lot lights turn themselves on.

About 50 seconds before totality, the shadow bands appeared. This was another of my favorite parts. They were much more visible and dramatic than I expected. We could see them over the whole ground, about 6 inches wide, moving a few feet per second from north to south. After totality they moved from east to west. They even show up in the video, but you can only really see them when it’s playing and not when it’s paused.

Then, totality. The moon’s shadow didn’t swoop in, which we probably would’ve needed a wide open space to see; the light just dimmed rapidly. We also didn’t notice any relief from the heat, maybe because the humidity trapped it all and the trees shielded us from any eclipse wind. We did see the light of sunset smeared across the whole horizon.

Totality was good, though I didn’t feel as present for it as I wanted to. There was just too much happening in my mind, but that’s typical of me. Two minutes is too short–I needed at least ten. One of the thoughts crowding my head was that I wished we had an unhindered view of the corona; the sun was behind the whispy edge of a cloud, though it could easily have been much worse. But I was very conscious that my siblings and I were all watching it together, and for me that too was a favorite part.

1:28pm. My Ricoh Theta S watching the three of us watching totality. #eclipse2017

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In the end we passed through totality safely. The alien sky snakes spared us this time.

After that we rounded off the eclipse with some Fig Newtons and headed home. Then off to the airport for Michael’s flight, with surprisingly mild traffic, and finally a long nap for me. Eclipse day was exhausting. But not too exhausting for Abbie and I to stay up late playing Once Upon a Time.

My bus ride home the next day gave me a perfect chance to reflect.

I don’t know if or when I’ll post my eclipse video, but there are plenty of others. Here are a few good ones from that day. Feel free to get lost in the chains of related videos.

* ECLIPSE 2007 – Veritasium
* Solar Eclipse 2017 Full 4K 360º VR Experience In Casper, Wyoming – TIME (Pan around the video with your mouse or finger, or watch in a VR viewer such as Google Cardboard.)
* Totality | Capturing the Total Solar Eclipse – Columbia Sportswear
* A Balloon With a View (capturing the “Great American Eclipse”) – Andrew Smith
* Eclipse 2017: Through the Eyes of NASA – NASA (their full coverage across the whole country, almost 4 hours long)

I’m already looking back on this vacation as one of the memorable ones, like our trip to Mammoth Cave a few years ago, and I’m looking forward to the next eclipse over the US in 2024. That one goes through my hometown, so if all goes well, I’m hoping to watch the hole in the sky with family once again.

Edit (9/4/2017): Switched out the balloon video for a shorter, edited one with a bit more drama.

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