Update for 8/6/2017

Posted on August 7, 2017 by Andy
  • Updates – Starting with this post I’m going to consider these updates as covering Sunday through Saturday (the day before the update) rather than Monday through Sunday (the day of the update), which should help me finish them a little earlier, since I’m not giving myself more to write about on the day the post is (technically) due.
  • Sleep – My sleep schedule deteriorated a bit last week, so this week I’ll watch myself more closely. Now’s not the time to let go of the rope of progress!
  • Project generator – Last week was mostly taken up by other things, but I inched a little further toward the first release. I thought I was ready to document, but I’ve gotten sidetracked trying to get the tests to pass on Node.js 4, because I guess we still care about that version. It’s good to learn all this though, because I’m planning to use Node.js and specifically Electron for most of my future desktop projects so I can focus on web technologies rather than learning a different set for each platform (desktop, web, and mobile). The generator project will probably stay slow for a while longer because I want to work on some apartment housekeeping, which I’ll explain below.
  • Beliefs report – I also inched along on the spirituality report, but I’ve been thinking about it a fair amount. I’ll write a little more on the overall framework this week and then post what I have so far.
  • Eclipse – In a couple of weeks my brother and I are traveling to visit our sister, who lives basically in the path of the solar eclipse that will be happening on the 21st, so if the weather cooperates, we’ll be watching that. My brother kindly ordered eclipse-watching glasses for us so we can continue using our eyes afterward. I’m planning to drive there, but I haven’t decided if I’m going to take my own old car or rent one for peace of mind.
  • Camera – Thinking about the eclipse led me to the idea of filming it, which for me these days suggests a 3D panorama, which reminded me that while the Google Cardboard Camera app is a nice first step, it has some glaring limitations that I’ve been looking forward to escaping, and so I decided now would be a good time to take my next step toward VR by buying a 360-degree camera. After a couple of days of research, since there are only a few of these cameras, I settled on the Ricoh Theta S, thanks to this tie-breaking review video. I might not end up filming the eclipse, if we don’t get to watch or it seems too distracting or my siblings don’t want to be filmed, but fortunately I’m not the first person to have this idea, and YouTube has several 360-degree solar eclipse videos, such as this Indonesian beach party and this surreal Norwegian landscape. But the eclipse was only an instigator, and the more I think about this camera, the more photo and video ideas I get–photographing places to take with me and hang out in at home, gathering hard-to-reach info by poking the camera behind appliances, filming an interesting drive so I can put off the distractions till later, plus some image processing experiments I might do once I know more math.
  • Housekeeping – In the past couple of weeks I’ve been reorganizing my apartment a little to make it easier to clean up, so I’ve been thinking of making housekeeping my next project after the project generator, and the 360-degree camera has given me some extra motivation to make the place more presentable, because I’d like to take some photos and videos around the apartment, such as to get decorating advice. Sometimes to get things done, you just need a big enough reason.
  • Podcasts – I’ve been expanding my futurism playlist to include podcasts on a few other large-scale topics that are relevant to my picture of the future, such as biotech, energy, and international development. Partly this is to get in touch with the problems I want AI to help us with, and partly it’s to keep track of where the world seems to be headed, whether it’s closer to a future I want or farther from it. Trying out all these podcasts is straining the usability of my podcast app (Downcast), so I’m experimenting with other ways to manage my listening, such as trying out Overcast and Pocket Casts. On a related note, I’ve decided to pick up Escape Pod and PodCastle again, plus Cast of Wonders, starting with the current episodes, rather than trying to catch up on the past few years first, since that plan wasn’t happening and I’ve noticed that stories from those podcasts sometimes stick in my mind and shape the way I see the world, so I don’t want to neglect them forever.
  • Work – I have a pretty hefty workload of ebooks to make this summer, most of them due on the same day in mid-September, and it was not made any lighter by the discovery that I have a very complicated one coming up that’s also due on that date, so I’ve rolled up my sleeves and scheduled my work so I get everything else done two weeks earlier, which gives me a month to make 17 ebooks–slightly faster than my usual pace. I’ve grouped the steps of my procedure so I can work on all 17 in parallel to conserve my mental task switching time, and I’ve given myself a rough deadline for each group of steps, and so far it’s working out well.
  • Nostalgia box – I’ve been severely distracted from this project for the past few months, but I had some thoughts the other day on how I want to proceed with it. First, I’m not going to worry about the folders I haven’t gotten around to opening, since they’ll still be there waiting for me next year, and I won’t even worry about the folders I didn’t get around to refilling, because I have some books from my childhood I can revisit for those months. And second, in addition to my earlier idea of simplify my creations so I can get them done quickly, I might take Jeremy’s advice and split up a single project across months, except that instead of immediately moving the project from one folder to the next as I add onto its parts, I’d try to make each component complete in itself so the next year I’ll have something to appreciate when I open that month’s folder, and then as I encounter the rest of the components in the following months, I’ll combine them.
Posted in 360-degree camera, Beliefs report, Blog, Coding project generator, Housekeeping, Nostalgia box, Podcasts, Sleep, Solar eclipse, Travel, Weeknotes, Work | 6 Comments

Update for 7/30/2017

Posted on July 31, 2017 by Andy
  • Sleep – My sleep schedule wasn’t great at the beginning or end of the week, but in the middle I actually slept pretty well and was more alert during the day, and since that wasn’t the first week of success in my sleep project, it makes me think I can regulate my sleep for more than two days per year, and that makes me want to keep trying.
  • Project generator – I got the templates working, but before I finalized that part, I started procrastinating, so that’s this week’s task, plus editing the READMEs, and then I think I’ll be done with the first release. Then after updating the coding guide with things I learned while working on the generator, I’ll move on to other programming projects, and I’ll update that generator and create others as I add features to those projects. To speed things up, this week I’m going to ignore the awkwardness of programming while eating dinner and just do it.
  • Beliefs report – I’m still working on the spirituality report. From the thoughts I sketched on the problems I run into while trying to be spiritual, I spun out a basic framework so I could put each problem in context, because I always want a map to navigate any domain I’m working in. Having the framework, rather than just a random collection of disconnected thought fragments, makes me more comfortable with the idea of posting it. A key feature of the framework is that I’d like to develop an individual- and coping-oriented spirituality, by which I mean looking at the whole scope of spirituality, including God’s plan for the world and the life of the church, from the vantage point of the individual’s experience and actions and the individual’s need to interact constructively with the challenges of life.
  • Media
    • Web videos
      • Isaac Arthur – I found this YouTube channel while looking for futurism podcasts, and now I’m watching all its videos in chronological order. If you’re interested in advanced space technology and humanity’s future in the galaxy, I recommend it as a fascinating, well-researched, and well-organized presentation of the possibilities. I’ve made a playlist for your viewing convenience.
      • Zelda timeline – I was in the mood for some mythology, and I decided to dive into video game lore and see if anyone had made sense of the Zelda timeline, which I’d heard is very complicated. If you too would like to spoil the plot of every Zelda game for yourself, I recommend this video, which delivers an hour-long epic retelling of the entire series. I’ll have to watch it a few more times to grasp everything.
    • Movies – I watched Dunkirk with Tim on Sunday, and I have it on solid authority that it is actually good, which happily corresponds with my opinion. I haven’t historically been interested in historical movies, but I like to keep an open mind and branch out when possible, and I’ve had good experiences with the ones I’ve watched in the past few years. As I watched the airplane scenes, I was reminded that engineers of the past were still smart and effective even though they were working with lower levels of technology, and Tim reminded me that more primitive technology can have advantages, since the mechanical controls of those planes would still work even if the power failed. It all reminded me of my interest in the era of technology just before electricity became widespread, and I wondered how much further people could take non-electric technology if they had the interest or need.
Posted in Beliefs report, Coding project generator, Coping, Futurism, Movies, Sleep, Spirituality, Video games, Videos, Weeknotes | 2 Comments

Update for 7/23/2017

Posted on July 24, 2017 by Andy
  • Sleep – I was much more tired and demotivated last week, despite going to bed at mostly normal times, so I’m going to blame that for how little I got done. This week I’m going to try getting 9 hours a night to see what that does.
  • Project generator – I didn’t do any coding, but I did learn about the next thing I have to code, the user prompts for filling in the templates, and in particular I got a handle on promises, which were really holding me back, since they’re convoluted and confusing but are used a lot in modern JavaScript. It’s been interesting to return to web technologies after so long away from them and to see how much they’ve grown. I don’t think Node.js even existed last time I was doing any semi-serious web development, but it’s convenient that I’m learning some of it for this project because I’ll also potentially use it for a project at work I want to do. Learning this stuff has showed me I need to improve my process for learning new technical material so it doesn’t go so slowly.
  • Beliefs report – Lunchtime is when I usually work on this, but most of those last week got crowded by other things, so I only got around to outlining a little more on my spirituality report.
  • Caring – A few circumstances have been nudging me back toward this project, learning how I can relate to people with more compassion, respect, and other constructive, empathetic attitudes. I don’t know how well I can fit it in with my other projects, but I can at least do some outlining. If I get into this project, it’ll probably help me think about AI ethics too, since I end up relating everything to AI these days.
  • Media
    • Books – I’ve decided to drop Yancey’s Prayer for now, since I wasn’t able to fit the print book into my schedule very well and the audiobook was leaving me feeling a little lost. Right now I’m mostly listening to podcasts on futurism (AI, robotics, transhumanism, and other future technologies), but here and there I’m listening to Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Rationality: From AI to Zombies (ebook).
    • Web video – Ideally I’d be working on projects while I eat dinner, but that’s harder when they involve typing, and lately I’ve been a little bit in a mood for weird things, so I’ve been watching some of my weird web series, mainly EveryManHYBRID and TribeTwelve from the Slenderverse, which I’m watching together because they cross over. I’m also keeping up with Jared Underground’s puppet series, where he creepifies Cookie Monster into an unnamed actual monster, along with other childhood toys, throwing them together in an imaginative and horrifying new setting with some great sound design.
  • Video games – My online friend Sumurai8 joined the Minecraft server I joined a while back, so I’ve been playing on there a little over the past couple of weeks. Saturday we were on together, and since I find typing while video gaming annoying, I broke with my usual pattern of text-only communication and voice chatted, which we’ve never done in the several years I’ve known him. It seems like a small change, but I see it as another step in my master plan to become more verbal in various contexts of my life (not to mention less hypocritical in my preference to hear online people talk).
Posted in Beliefs report, Books, Caring, Coding project generator, People, Productivity, Sleep, Video games, Videos, Weeknotes, Weird stuff | 3 Comments

Update for 7/16/2017

Posted on July 20, 2017 by Andy
  • Sleep – I was mostly successful in my first week of getting my sleep schedule under control, and it made a big difference in my mood and alertness and productivity, as I expected. People say diet and exercise improve your state of mind, but I find nothing helps me nearly as much as sleep. I even started cleaning up my cluttered apartment, and the extra energy also got me through the troubles of the week with much less inner drama than I would’ve had. More on that below.
  • Project generator – This is my main project right now, so I’d be working on it anyway, but listening to my AI podcasts has been adding to my motivation, since this project is the bottleneck for all the AI learning and other coding projects I want to do. Last week I fixed my broken test and added a couple more tests, and now I’m ready to add the code to my templates that’ll make them real templates.
  • Beliefs report – To make it easier to list the evangelical beliefs I’ve kept, I collected belief statements from various organizations and denominations that’ve been part of my life over the years. But gathering those reminded me that what I really care and think most about is spirituality, so I made a detour into outlining my current spirituality. I’ll probably write just enough of that to give me a good idea of what’s there, come back to writing the beliefs report, and then finish the spirituality report.
  • Computer – Toward the end of last week, my desktop computer at home developed a severe case of blue screen, and I put on my scientist cap and determined the culprit was the 8G RAM stick I bought a few months ago, so now my computer is working again but back to being slow, and I’m looking into getting a replacement from the manufacturer.
  • Apartment – About the time my computer’s RAM was dying, people were working on the sewer in our parking lot and broke an unmarked gas pipe, so the gas in our building was out a couple of days while they fixed it, which meant no stove, oven, or hot water. The guy who told me about the problem shut off the gas to my oven/stove, and I didn’t know how to safely reset everything once the gas was fixed, so my kitchen was half non-functional for a few days till I could get someone to either tell me what to do or come by and do it for me. This all happened right in time for me to not be able to cook the raw chicken I’d thawed in my fridge.
  • Movies – I saw Spider-Man: Homecoming with Jeremy on Sunday, and I liked it enough that I wouldn’t mind seeing it again, even less than I’d mind rewatching the other MCU movies, mostly because even after getting to know all these other Marvel characters from the movies, Spider-Man is still my favorite, but now closely followed by Iron Man and Black Widow. Partly I like Spider-Man’s acrobatics, but also I like coming-of-age stories, maybe because I feel like I’m continually growing up, and that’s a big part of Spider-Man’s genre, at least in the movies. This one inspired me to keep developing my knowledge and skills, because those are the closest things to superpowers I’ll have, unless I get on board with any transhumanism that takes place in my lifetime.
  • Social life – Several families at church are hosting dinners over the next month or so, and I’m trying to wade back into my church’s social life, so I signed up for one, and it took place on Sunday. The interaction was very organized and introvert friendly, and I had a good time and got to talk with some people I’d been wanting to get to know, so I was glad I went.
Posted in Apartment, Beliefs report, Coding project generator, Hardware, Movies, People, Sleep, Weeknotes | 1 Comment

Update for 7/9/2017

Posted on July 10, 2017 by Andy
  • Project generator – This is a more accurate term for what I was calling the code console before. I made progress last week on the code and posted a minor update, but after that I hit a snag where my code worked but my test for it didn’t, so I’m investigating that.
  • Beliefs report – I posted an update discussing the types of belief I’ll be covering in the essay, which should help me organize my thoughts and write it more easily.
  • Health – I had my colonoscopy on Friday to check on my ulcerative colitis, and from what I can dimly remember from the recovery room while the drugs were wearing off, my doctor was encouraged because there was less inflammation than usual. I’m supposed to see him again in a couple of months for a follow-up conversation.
  • Sleep – After the colonoscopy I slept for many hours and missed the SGDQ speedrun I’d been planning to watch, but I didn’t mind because I could watch it later and I reeeeeeally needed the sleep. As a result, the rest of the weekend I had lots more energy than usual, even with much less sleep Saturday night, enough energy that I actually felt up to joining the social event after church, and I haven’t really felt like socializing in a long time. So this has reminded me why sleep is good, and I’m thinking about how I can help myself remember that and plan for more sleep on a regular basis.
  • Movies – Sunday afternoon Tim and I spontaneously decided to go see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and since my experience with this series can be summarized by the word confusion, I paid very close attention this time, and I successfully followed the plot, to the point that I was possibly spotting holes. Anyway, as usual I don’t know if the movie was good, but I liked it.
Posted in Beliefs report, Coding project generator, Health, Movies, Sleep, Weeknotes | 3 Comments

Update for 7/2/2017

Posted on July 4, 2017 by Andy

Happy Independence Day! Even if you don’t live in the US, just celebrate being independent anyway.

  • Code console – I only worked on this a little last week and didn’t post any updates, but I’m getting impatient with myself, so I’m going to try to push myself more this week.
  • Grad school – Last week I was thinking about a new programming language I wanted to learn, and it reminded me that when it comes to learning new technical areas, I really need to determine what context I should learn them in–on my own, a pre-grad school class, or grad school. For that I need to determine what topics are likely to be covered in my grad program and what admissions will expect, and for that I need get back to researching grad programs, so I’ll be doing that soon.
  • Beliefs report – I still didn’t post anything, but I did write some preparatory thoughts that should let me post something on types of belief this week, which will help me write the rest of the essay.
  • Health – I have a colonoscopy scheduled for Friday so the doctor can see how things are going with my ulcerative colitis. To me my condition is the same as usual, abnormal but manageable. This has been a tougher colonoscopy to arrange than others, with a scheduling problem and a mixup with ordering the prep medicine, so hopefully things will all fall into place by Friday, or else I’ll have to reschedule again.
  • Video games
    • Game log – Last week while contemplating what to buy in the Steam Summer Sale, I decided I only wanted short games, since I already have so many I haven’t played, so I asked Google for guidance and found HowLongToBeat, a website that lists average playthrough times for a lot of games, and it also lets you create a game log so you can keep track of the games you’ve played and your times, so I spent a decent chunk of the week creating my list, and I’m thinking of playing through my backlog from roughly shortest to longest, hopefully without distracting myself too much from my other projects. But it seems like the rest of last week was spent playing Minecraft, because it’s an easy way for me to feel productive when I don’t want to do real work.
    • SGDQ – This week I’m intermittently watching Summer Games Done Quick, an annual speedrunning charity marathon, the counterpart to Awesome Games Done Quick in January, where this year they raised over $2 million for Prevent Cancer Foundation. Speedrunning is a style of video game playing where the player tries to beat the game as quickly as possible, usually taking advantage of glitches in the game. The main event for me (schedule) will be the Mario relay race, where several speedrunners I watch will be competing, but I’m also looking forward to the Chrono Trigger run, because that was my first console RPG.
  • Chapel – Last week we had another spy in chapel, this time an ex-KGB agent, Jack Barsky, whose book, Deep Undercover, is already out. He wasn’t as good at interviews as Michele Rigby Assad but still interesting.
Posted in Beliefs report, Chapel, Coding project generator, Grad school, Health, Video games, Weeknotes | 1 Comment

Update for 6/25/2017

Posted on June 25, 2017 by Andy
  • Code console – I got the project generator testing to work after hitting a snag, which I should create an issue for somewhere, and now I’m using test-driven development to write the basic generator code that will turn templates into project files. One advantage of TDD I’m discovering is that it throttles your planning down to a more realistic level, since each step in the execution of your plan has to have concrete results for the purpose of testing, and you have to figure out what those will be before you even figure out how to carry out the step.
  • Beliefs report – I detected some demotivation, so I spent last week examining that and coming up with some steps I can take to motivate myself and manage the writing better, and this week I’ll get back to the report. The motivating/managing steps have to do with the writing process, the organization of the essay, and topics to cover that would give me a better handle on the material. One of the more interesting of the topical steps is to ponder ways to handle the vagueness of religion: (a) reducing it, (b) managing it, or (c) surrendering to it.
  • Books – I got through The Fear Index pretty quickly, and it didn’t comment on AI as much as I’d hoped, but for the most part I liked what it said, though I think the book’s scenario would have some significant differences in real life. But given the wide-ranging subjects of Robert Harris’ other novels, AI is clearly not the overall theme of his work, so I’m pleased that his treatment of it was on the realistic side, since it’s easy for people to think magically about it. Now I’m back to Philip Yancey’s Prayer so I can finish it and hopefully find some more motivation and food for thought for my beliefs report.
  • Chapel – Last week at work our chapel was an interview with Michele Rigby Assad, an ex-CIA agent and Christian who interviewed terrorist informants with her husband in places like Baghdad. Riveting. Her book is coming out in February.
Posted in Beliefs report, Books, Chapel, Coding project generator, Weeknotes | 2 Comments

Update for 6/18/2017

Posted on June 20, 2017 by Andy
  • Code console – It doesn’t do anything yet, but I’ve posted the initial code for my first project generator. I’m working out how to do behavior-driven development on it with Mocha. I’m also investigating how to set up literate programming with Pweave (switching from pyweb, which I was using for the Math Student Simulator ) so I can include that in the generator at some point.
  • Beliefs report – I started on the theology proper section, but it wasn’t ready to be posted, and then I decided to change my approach, so maybe this week I can post something.
  • Books
    • The Long War – I finished this one after dragging my feet for a few weeks. I was hoping the pace of the plot would pick up after all the exposition of the first book, but it was as slow and disjointed as before, and the title was barely relevant, so I’m starting to agree with this review of the first book (h/t Michael). I’ll probably finish the series someday in case the story ends up going somewhere specific, but I’ll wait a while.
    • The Fear Index – I’m in the mood to think about AI these days, so I’ve decided to explore AI-related fiction more purposefully, and I’m starting with this one that my brother told me about a while back, which so far is a thriller about an investing firm. As a side note, I’ve also been listening to a few podcasts on AI and related topics, such as the O’Reilly Data Show Podcast, which had a recent episode on financial trading.
Posted in AI, Beliefs report, Books, Coding project generator, Podcasts, Weeknotes | 2 Comments

Update for 6/11/2017

Posted on June 12, 2017 by Andy
  • Code console – I’ve learned the basics of Yeoman and associated tools, so this week I’ll try making a generator or two for my most common project types, and post them on GitHub. Whenever that’s done, I’ll post any relevant updates to my coding guide, and then I’ll take a break to deal with some other projects, such as doing some website maintenance and cleaning up my apartment.
  • Beliefs report – I’ve posted an update with more on the prolegomena and a large part of the bibliology section. (Really I posted it Monday of this week, but let’s lie to ourselves and say that counts as the tail end of last week.) It’ll be interesting to see how this essay evolves, and I could see it getting me back into my religious areas of interest and spawning several research projects. I’ve already spent some quality time in the library looking at philosophy of religion books.
  • Health – I had my Remicade infusion on Thursday, which now takes about an hour longer because of the increased dose, but I take the whole afternoon off for these sessions anyway, and I secretly like going to the hospital for them, so I don’t mind. Now I have to schedule my colonoscopy, hopefully without interfering with my dentist appointment on Wednesday, and then maybe I can be done with medical events for a while.
  • Media
    • Movies – One happy side effect of rescheduling my colonoscopy is that I could go see Wonder Woman Tuesday night with my geek meetup. It didn’t quite have the magic for me that the Lynda Carter show from my childhood does, but I still loved it, partly because I’ve been waiting for a live-action Wonder Woman film for many years, and partly because there were many things to love about it. Before I went, I saw this tweet about viewers crying during the fight scenes, so I wondered how I’d react to them, and to my surprise a sudden sob did escape during No Man’s Land, but it was for different reasons than the article gave. The article from the tweet, which I read later, was about a sort of pent-up feminist energy, which I guessed while watching and which I could distantly appreciate, but my reaction was more about her striking defensive role in that scene, which for me felt somehow both vulnerable and aggressively protective, completely drawing the attack but without being overcome by it, like a messianic mother bear.
    • TV – Tim and I have started watching Foyle’s War. We got through the first episode Sunday night, and we had fun speculating about the mystery and commenting on British culture. I tried to pay attention to a long-term topic of mine, which is what makes an interesting revelation in this kind of story. The answer to this episode’s mystery went in a different direction than I was hoping, but it was still interesting and surprising.
Posted in Beliefs report, Coding project generator, Health, Meetups, Movies, TV, Weeknotes | 7 Comments

Update for 6/4/2017

Posted on June 8, 2017 by Andy

Well that was a lot of procrastinating for such a short update. I’m sure I have some excuse, but I can’t think of it right now.

  • Code console – I’ve been looking for programming project skeleton generators written by other people so I don’t have to write one myself, and last week I got through my long first pass of looking through the likely options, and then I cut my second pass short by just picking a popular one in JavaScript called Yeoman, which can be used for projects in any language. So this week I’m figuring out how to use it, and then I’ll try making some generators that fit my upcoming projects. My exploration took me through some current web development tools, and after being away from that field for so long it was interesting to get an idea of what’s happening in it.
  • Beliefs report – I wrote a decent amount, but it wasn’t quite in a postable state, so I’ll probably update it this week.
  • Health – Remicade hasn’t been helping much, so my doctor doubled my dose, which was on the low end, but the insurance had to go back and forth with the nurses to approve it, which still wasn’t done by the end of the week, so I had to cancel the infusion that was scheduled for Thursday so that could get settled.
  • Video games – I’ve been sneaking in some Minecraft lately, working on my project of selecting about 18 biomes and building homes that match them. Right now I’m building up my central base.
Posted in Beliefs report, Coding project generator, Health, Video games, Weeknotes | 2 Comments