Update for 10/30/2016

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Andy

Project updates

  • Math relearning – I’ve released the first alpha version, which isn’t very interesting to use, but the documentation might be slightly less uninteresting to read. I’d love to say I’m going to jump into the math programming this week, but because of my other plans that’ll probably be delayed till December unless I can slip it in on the weekends.
  • GTD – My main task on this is mapping my projects, which I’ve barely started but will continue this week, and in fact I’ll be able to combine it with another project I’ll describe later in this entry.
  • Coffee – I’m still aiming to fix my sleeping patterns, but in the meantime I’ll be content to patch their effects, so I’ve decided to develop a coffee habit (okay, not really a habit, if I can help it), and I’ve been exploring the available ways to get coffee easily at work. The coffee from the vending machine in the kitchen is too weak and dirt-like, and the coffee from the Keurig machine on our floor is good but environmentally unfriendly, so to avoid resorting to it often, my next step is to investigate instant. At some point I’ll take Cory Doctorow’s advice and try cold brew, but I’m too lazy to make it on a regular basis. This is all very new to me because as a child I thought of coffee as a drink for grown-ups, and I never got around to growing up enough to start drinking it, and I still wouldn’t have except that a neighbor of my uncle’s offered us some when I visited a few years ago (Folgers French Vanilla Cappuccino, I think), but even after that I only drank it on rare social and distance driving occasions, but at this point in my life I don’t feel my identity is somehow wrapped up in not drinking coffee, hence this experiment.
  • Media
    • Books
      • Less Than Zero – I’m a little over halfway done, and all I really have to say so far I said in this tweet thread.
      • Peak – This is a book about skill development by Anders Ericsson, one of the leading researchers in expert performance, and I found it inspiring and motivating, even though the authors made it clear that expertise is a lot of hard work. That point will help me prioritize the skills I want to develop, since I’m more aware of how unrealistic it would be to try to develop too many of them to a high level. The book also helped me along in resolving a question I’ve had for many years, whether natural talent or hard work is more admirable, by arguing that raw talent only gets you ahead at lower levels of skill, which means that at higher levels the will to practice becomes all important.
      • The Willpower Instinct – Since developing skill takes persistence, I’m delaying ‘Salem’s Lot to listen to this book by Kelly McGonigal, based on the course she teaches at Stanford. The book is as inspiring and motivating as Ericsson’s, but it reminds me of just how eager we all are to delude ourselves in every way possible, though it also points us to the ways out of this dark forest with many practical exercises, and I’m already seeing the effects just from casually following some of McGonigal’s advice.
    • TV – I’m 2/3 through Marble Hornets, and not that I’m qualified as a critic, but that series is surprisingly good for something that’s obviously a very low budget amateur film, with effective suspense and more self-awareness than I expected. It’s written well enough that it’s even gotten me to shift my attitudes toward the characters over time. If I ever get around to it, I’d like to study it as an example of its genre (whatever that is–a found footage creepypasta ARG?).
  • NaNoWriMo – I don’t have a novel to write, but I do have a lot of content to write for my website and maybe an offline project or two, material I’ve put off writing forever, so I’m going to piggyback off of this event to get a bunch of that done, if I can keep up. I’m going to prioritize original content that I can just write–stuff that’s already in my head and doesn’t take much research, including an article mapping my projects–and unless I run out of things to say, I’ll aim for the typical 50,000 words spread over the various articles, though possibly not all of it will end up online, as I mentioned. My NaNoWriMo profile is here, and I was pleased to find that they accommodate people who aren’t writing novels.
  • Photography – Here’s an ominous Halloween crow for you.

Posted in Books, Coffee, Existential crisis, GTD, Math relearning, Photography, Programming, Project updates, Skill development, Sleep, TV, Willpower, Writing | 1 Comment

Update for 10/23/2016

Posted on October 24, 2016 by Andy

Project updates

  • Math relearning – I finished the installation code, but I want to update the readme file before I commit everything. Then I’ll start on the actual math programming.
  • GTD – I’ve decided to revisit an idea I had a while back, making a concept map of my projects and their goals, which will help me think through my priorities. I’ll do some of that this week, using the open source concept mapping software VUE (Visual Understanding Environment).
  • Life maintenance – I haven’t made much progress on either regulating my sleep schedule or getting exercise in quite a while, and saying that every week doesn’t seem to help, so as with diet, I’m going to drop those categories from these updates until something interesting happens, though I’ll continue to experiment with them.
  • Media
    • TV – Doctor Who and Arrow are on hold for Luke Cage, and now Luke Cage is on hold for my Halloween special, a creepy web series called Marble Hornets (along with the response videos from totheark), which came to mind last week when I wandered back into the dark side of YouTube and took another look at a channel called Night Mind that investigates the weird fiction of the web in depth, starting with Marble Hornets.
    • Books
      • My side trip through the Magic Thief series has concluded, and although I didn’t like the first book much when I read it long ago, now that the series is over I already miss it.
      • Next I’ll continue my Halloween theme by trying out my idea for a Stephen King reading project: the Dark Tower series and all the major tie-in stories in publication order, which is probably too ambitious (24 novels and short stories), but I’ll see how it goes, starting with a trip to another distant library to pick up the audiobook for Salem’s Lot.
      • While I’m waiting to start that one, I’ve been listening to a book I bought a few weeks ago on the subject of skill development, which I’ve had in mind to explore for years, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson, one of the main researchers in that field; and as you might expect, my mind is already spinning out project ideas.
      • My superbook investigations while I made my Christmas wishlist led me to some more conventional but still intriguing children’s books by author-illustrators like Colin Thompson and Shaun Tan, so I’m looking more into those.
      • In unguarded moments I find myself looking up books on apologetics, so I guess I’m ramping up to do that project sometime soon.
Posted in Apologetics, Books, Daily routine, Exercise, GTD, Math relearning, Programming, Project updates, Projects, Skill development, Sleep, TV | 2 Comments

Update for 10/16/2016

Posted on October 18, 2016 by Andy

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

Posted in Anime, Books, Current events, Daily routine, Diet, Dusk, Exercise, GTD, Housekeeping, Math relearning, Movies, Music, Photography, Programming, Project updates, Site updates, Sleep | 5 Comments

Update for 10/9/2016

Posted on October 10, 2016 by Andy

Project updates

  • Math relearning – I didn’t get a lot done on this last week, but I did learn some more about the code I need to write and make a list of the tasks involved, which I’ll try to get through this week. I’m feeling more motivated on this project both because I’ve been working on it and because I ran across an interesting article on Common Core math, which of course led me to other articles, and I might post the wiki article I started a while back for collecting links on the topic.
  • Life maintenance
    • Ulcerative colitis – I met with my gastroenterologist last week, and I’m going to try switching from Humira to Remicade, so that’ll start in the next few weeks.
    • Diet – I got my cholesterol results back from the lab, and everything was in a normal range except total cholesterol and LDL, which were still greatly improved from my earlier numbers, so I’m going to stick to the TLC diet a while longer. I might need to start tracking my food again, because I’m noticing myself getting more lax.
    • Exercise – I think I’m going to have to just set my alarm earlier so this gets done and then deal with whatever tiredness happens.
    • Daily routine – Do you have any stubborn life patterns that resist all your intentions to change them? Bad time management is one of mine. It’s an issue in need of journaling, if I can get myself to do it. I guess I should set my alarm even earlier.
  • Books – I’m waiting for a movie to be returned at the distant library that has the Magic Thief audiobooks so I can consolidate my trips and pick up both the movie and the next book, so in the meantime I’m listening to some short books I can cram into a week, such as Coraline by Neil Gaiman, which I’d never read (how many books does that guy write per year??), and From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which I read as a child but don’t think I ever finished, and I didn’t remember the plot except that the main characters are two kids who run away from home to live in an art museum.
  • Creative writing – The little story Coraline writes toward the beginning of the Gaiman book reminded me of a passing thought that I’m now thinking of turning into a project: writing extremely short stories as an exercise, partly just to get myself used to writing whole stories and partly to experiment with writing stories iteratively, expanding my story blips into longer flash fiction in several passes.

Life updates

  • Politics – I haven’t gotten back into the topic of fringe theories, but I did see an interesting and troubling article recently about how they’ve made their way into mainstream politics. To me it highlights the need for listening, since Trump in some ways represents the frustrations of people who’ve felt ignored, and they’re now more able to speak to each other, so they feel validated, but I don’t think there’s still much listening across political lines, maybe because it feels unnecessary, dangerous, or impossible, but then there are cases like Chick fil A. One of my distant dreams is to be involved in some kind of dialogue organization.
Posted in Blood tests, Books, Current events, Daily routine, Diet, Exercise, Fringe theories, Health, Life updates, Math relearning, Programming, Project updates, Sleep, Writing | 4 Comments

Update for 10/2/2016

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Andy

Project updates

  • Life maintenance
    • Diet – I got my blood drawn at the lab for my lipid panel, so now I’m waiting.
    • Exercise – Nope, none. I think getting my sleep schedule under control would help this, since I’d feel better about getting up early.
    • Ulcerative colitis – I see my doctor this week about my ineffective Humira treatment.
    • Daily routine – Last week I said maybe I should give up on regulating my sleep, but I’m back to disagreeing with that idea, since I don’t like feeling like my life is a mess, and unregulated sleep is one of the main causes. This week I’ll try taking a few minutes at the end of work each day to plan my evening and decide what I’m going to leave out so I can get to sleep on time.
    • Housekeeping – I didn’t end up spending much time on this, but I did make progress on the biggest nuisances, so I’ll consider that a win. I don’t want to put off other projects for housekeeping, but I’ll keep working on it here and there.
  • Wishlist – I might add a couple more things later, but I’m counting my Christmas list as pretty much done, because I’m pooped from all this research. When I make my Christmas list, I’m basically planning for several future projects at once and filtering it all on its funness rating, and it gets tiring. It has, however, gotten me thinking about a topic that’s near and dear to me, a loose collection of book genres I’m calling superbooks, and I figured it was time I posted my wiki seed article on it, which I’ll fill out as time goes on, probably even this week. It’s also gotten me thinking about some of my creative projects, such as writing, which I bought another book for, The Writer’s Idea Book–a set of writing prompts, something that’s been lacking in my collection–so maybe I’ll work on that and some other creative projects soon.
  • TV – Netflix released Luke Cage on Friday, the latest in Marvel’s street-level superhero shows, so I’m pausing my other shows while I watch through that. I’ve seen two episodes, and I’m enjoying it pretty well so far, especially Alfre Woodard, who I’ve liked ever since I was introduced to her in Star Trek: First Contact. It’s interesting to get another glimpse into (a Hollywood version of) a community that’s so different from mine.
  • Math relearning – I don’t want to keep delaying this project, so I’m back to math programming this week. My goal is to get through most of the basic supporting code (setup script, test script, and user interface).

Life updates

  • Church – We celebrated our merged church’s one-year anniversary Sunday along with the 5-, 10-, and 50-year anniversaries of our component congregations. I ended up skipping the morning service because I got up late, but I made myself go to the special afternoon service, which was 45 minutes too long for me, but I did feel kind of inspired by some of it, and our old pastor spoke, which made me miss him a bit.
Posted in Blood tests, Books, Church, Daily routine, Devotions, Diet, Exercise, Health, Holidays, Housekeeping, Life updates, Math relearning, Project updates, Sleep, TV, Writing | 2 Comments

Update for 9/25/2016

Posted on September 28, 2016 by Andy

It’s even later this week, but it’s a good one.

Project updates

  • Math relearning – My unnamed critic is having a very bad day because I have posted my devastating rebuttal! An overly long discussion of how programming can work as an approach to learning, though you could get the general idea by reading the Description and Reservations sections. Now at last I can get back to the actual programming, and my next step is to write some more of the supporting code, though I’ll be focusing on other projects this week.
  • Life maintenance
    • Health – I still have a little congestion, but otherwise I’m back to normal.
    • Diet – My TLC diet experiment ended this week, so yesterday morning (Tuesday) I did my home cholesterol test to see if the diet managed to budge my lipids at all in the face of Humira’s side effects, and I was astonished to find that the results were not only vastly improved from two months ago but, for the first time in at least nine years, were all in normal ranges! I’m going to get a lipid panel at my doctor’s office to double check, but in any case I’ll probably just continue with this diet, though I won’t track it as much because by now I have the gist of how much of what I can eat, and recording every meal and snack gets to be a pain.
    • Exercise – I think exercise must’ve been the main reason my triglycerides lowered, since low carbs were supposed to help but didn’t, maybe because of the Humira, so that motivates me to get back into walking, which still didn’t happen last week. I’m also feeling a little more motivated to settle on a workout log app and start the weight lifting part of my exercise plan, if I can fit it into my schedule.
    • Daily routine – Recording every activity is also a pain, and I haven’t done much with the information, so I’m ending that too for now. In any case, at the moment I’m more concerned with getting things done than keeping a regular sleep schedule, and I’m starting to seriously wonder whether I should care about that at all or just accept it as one of my quirks that I’ll always have this conflict between activity and sleep and that sleep will often lose.
    • Housekeeping – An organized living space frees my mind, so cleaning up my apartment will be one of my projects for this week so I can be more mentally prepared for my upcoming projects.
  • Existential crisis – The issues are still there, but they’ve receded into the background, and I feel better about them, though they’re still influencing my priorities, but in a good way. Whenever I’m troubled, life’s less gloomy parts tend to trickle in, expand my perspective, and improve my mood, and that’s what happened this time again, plus a good conversation with my boss, because we have that kind of relationship.
  • Media
    • Books – I finished The Magician’s Land, which was excellent and satisfying and thought provoking, and it somehow put me in the mood for the Magic Thief series, which I’ve started over because I couldn’t remember the plot of the first book. Maybe I thought of it because there was a certain bleakness to the Grossman book, my illness was putting me in a similar mood, and I remembered feeling the same way about the Prineas book (though it feels less so this time around), and I know I also wanted a story that took place all in one, urban location. Anyway, one effect of my existential crisis has been a desire to prioritize and manage my entertainment more carefully, since life is short and I don’t want to be mindless about it, but I also don’t want to cut it out of my life, because lately I’ve been reminded that stories and music are some of the things that expand and enrich my perspective and bring me out of dark places.
    • Movies – We had our final Star Wars marathon on Sunday with episodes 3 and 7, the latter of which Jeremy’s family hadn’t seen, and I might as well have not seen 3 because I barely remembered any of it, though that’s probably because I’d only seen it once. Jeremy loved the look of 7 because it reminded him of the original trilogy, and my curiosity about the connection led me to the term production design and the fact that looking like the old movies was totally on purpose.
    • Music – I’m collecting piano rock (Pandora station, Spotify playlist) to give me ideas for my improvisation at church, since I always feel in danger of becoming stale. I’ll probably try to get around to learning to play some of those songs.
  • Wishlist – My other project for this week is to update my Amazon wishlist, because this is about the time certain people in my life start to pester me because they like to do their Christmas shopping half a year early. Christmas lists are tricky because I have to think of things that would be fun to get at Christmas that I’m not going to want to buy before then myself, which I know is an extremely first world problem and also feels very self-centered, but I also know it’s annoying to shop for someone when you don’t really know what they’d like, so it’s only right for the recipient to take a thoughtful moment to be selfish.
Posted in Blood tests, Books, Daily routine, Diet, Exercise, Existential crisis, Health, Holidays, Housekeeping, Math relearning, Movies, Music, Programming, Project updates, Sleep | 3 Comments

Update for 9/18/2016

Posted on September 20, 2016 by Andy

The update’s a little later than usual this week. It’s colliding with my math project and some freelance work in the kind of time management trainwreck that sometimes happens to me.

Project updates

  • Life maintenance
    • Health – It’s annoying to feel slightly sick when I think I should be over it by now, but every day I feel more almost normal. I used to get over illnesses in a couple of days, but maybe because of all the immunosuppressants I take for my ulcerative colitis, things tend to hang on for weeks now. At least I still don’t get sick often.
    • Diet – Next week is my home blood test for cholesterol, and after that I’m not sure what I’ll do for my diet, probably still limit sugar and saturated fat but otherwise take a break from thinking about it. That’s practically all I’m doing already. I’ve lost a lot of steam on all this dieting, since it’s not really my favorite hobby, if you couldn’t tell.
    • Exercise – My break from exercise continued last week, despite what I said in my update. It was mostly because I didn’t like giving up sleep, but also because I’ve still felt kind of fragile, with my physical state fluctuating a little more than it usually would. I’ll try walking anyway this week, since next week’s the blood test, and if I somehow get sicker again, I’ll know it was a mistake.
    • Daily routine – My schedule hasn’t exactly been regular, but I did get a lot more sleep last week and work a fair amount on my math project. That’s one benefit of being sick, giving myself permission to sleep.
  • Math relearning – I need a day or two more for the finishing touches, and then I’ll post it and get on with the programming. I want to get some more preliminaries done on that, and then I need to take a break to pay attention to some other projects.
  • Media
    • Books – I finished The Magician King and have started the last book in the series, The Magician’s Land, and by this point it’s safe to say Lev Grossman is one of my favorite authors. I like hearing his characters interact with their fantasy setting. I’ve been debating what direction to take my listening after this–maybe some more cyberpunk.
    • Movies – Tim and I saw Star Trek Beyond Sunday night, which we both liked, though I wished there’d been a little more talking and a little less action like I seem to remember from earlier Trek movies.
    • TV – I spent a good chunk of Saturday watching a few episodes of Dagashi Kashi, an anime I started a couple of months ago–with the last episode by accident, or the latest episode anyway–and now that I’ve seen the first episode, major questions about the premise have been cleared up. The peaceful rural/suburban setting is mostly why I’m watching it, but in my current mood I’m also finding the show’s quietness kind of depressing.
  • Existential crisis – My current mood is a contained but gnawing anxiety about the decisions I should or shouldn’t be making about major areas of my life and the slowness with which I move on everything. It’s been growing over the past few weeks and gotten pretty painful over the past week or so, probably helped along by my sickness. But this kind of crisis happens to me occasionally, though usually less intensely, and I think journaling and some quality socializing will help it shrink.
  • Photography – To end on a happier note, here are some cute animals.

    Taken 9/1. You know, I hardly ever see a squirrel actually eating.

    A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

    Taken 9/19. I’m not sure if it’s gotten the worm.

    A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

Posted in Anime, Books, Daily routine, Exercise, Health, Math relearning, Movies, Photography, Project updates | Leave a comment

Update for 9/11/2016

Posted on September 12, 2016 by Andy

Life updates

  • Health – I was sick last week starting Tuesday–some kind of cold or flu, I think, with a sore throat, congestion, aches, a bit of spaciness, and a fever–and it threw off most other things I was planning to do. The worst was Tuesday night, when I took a nap after work and then spent an hour trying to will myself out of bed. Wednesday was better, but I took the day off of work, and then I worked from home on Thursday to spare people my germs, but that was annoying, so I went back in on Friday. I’m mostly better now with just a little congestion.

Project updates

  • Life maintenance
    • Diet – Two weeks till my home blood test to see if the TLC diet, or my half-hearted version of it, is doing anything for my lipids in the face of my Humira. After stalling for a few weeks, my weight began dropping again last week, which was probably the illness, so that’ll be my diet plan after TLC (not really).
    • Exercise – I gave myself the week off so my sickness wouldn’t get worse. I’ll get back to my walks this week.
    • Daily routine – There wasn’t much of one last week.
    • Housekeeping – After I finish this math program intro, I am definitely taking a week to clean up my apartment. I’m feeling crowded and a bit weighed down, and I think clearing up all the clutter would improve my outlook on life. For me, physical space tends to translate into mental space.
  • Math relearning – As expected, I made some progress but didn’t finish, but I blame the sickness and the ways it disrupted my week, such as giving me an excuse to sleep at odd times. But apparently I’ve decided it’ll take about a year to finish this thing, so one week down, 51 to go!
  • Books – I finished Glasshouse, which was okay but not as fascinating to me as Accelerando. The main character got sick at about the time I did, which did not help me feel better. Now I’m on The Magician King by Lev Grossman, and it was instantly compelling, like the first one in the series.
  • Dusk – Since this week’s update was kind of a downer, here are some nice clouds for you, from Saturday.

    A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

Posted in Books, Daily routine, Diet, Dusk, Exercise, Health, Housekeeping, Life updates, Math relearning, Project updates | 2 Comments

Update for 9/4/2016

Posted on September 5, 2016 by Andy

Happy September! Here’s a tweet from my sister about an article on making a fresh start this time of year.

Project updates

  • Math relearning – Life never misses an opportunity to disappoint my optimistic scheduling expectations, and so despite my diligent efforts I’ll need at least another week writing my math program intro, but let’s be realistic and call it a year. It turns out I have a lot to say about learning by programming, but I like what I’ve been writing, which might be part of the problem. One project management skill I need to work on is scaling back a project to fit it into a time frame while still producing a satisfying result. In any case, it’s turning out I care so much about this topic of learning by programming that I don’t want to move forward with any other intellectual project until I’ve gotten somewhere with this technique so I can use it in some way on those projects.
  • Life maintenance
    • Diet – Lately instead of cooking industriously, I’ve been re-exploring the frozen dinner aisle with my TLC diet in mind, which limits only saturated fat and cholesterol, so it gives me more choices than my doctor’s old recommendation of a low-fat diet that limited total fat, back before he switched to low-carb. Annoyingly, for some of the products, the nutritional info on the box doesn’t match the info in my diet tracking app, so I’m avoiding those brands, which so far are Boston Market and maybe Chili’s. I don’t think I’m doing this diet quite right–not getting quite enough soluble fiber, fruits and vegetables, fat, protein, or even calories–but it’s hard to coordinate all the different factors and find time for food prep, and I’m procrastinating on figuring out a better meal plan until I can fit in some time programming a tool to help me, though probably by that point the initial experiment will be over and I’ll have started on another low-carb experiment.
    • Exercise – I’ve decided I have enough else to do that if I don’t get in my exercise in the morning, I’ll count it out for the day, and so I’ve skipped exercise a few days recently because I’ve slept extra in the mornings, but oh well, I’m mostly sticking to the schedule, and it shouldn’t be a problem if I can get my sleep schedule under control, though when has that ever happened? I do kind of like my walks, since they give me half an hour to let my mind wander, which is pretty much my favorite state of being, and it’s a major reason I walk instead of jog, since anything resembling intense physical activity takes over my attention with all the strain and pain.
    • Daily routine – My task tracking app tells me I’ve gotten almost enough sleep over the past week, just not quite at the right times, and I’ve spent a decent amount of time on my projects, but I still feel dissatisfied and a little depressed about my time management skills. Do other people have trouble getting around to everything important in a timely fashion, or is it just me? Anyway, as I looked at my messy apartment this weekend, I concluded I need to restart my GTD practices, which have been minimal for a long time, so that’ll be coming up in the next week or two. It’s my Steptember fresh start.
    • Clothing – My collection of t-shirts is old and wearing out, so I’m on the lookout for new ones–a few plain ones and some graphic ones, like this Justice League one I picked up from Target. One problem to contend with is a trend I’ve seen in several brands for the bottom of the sleeve to be super short, which pulls the rest of the sleeve awkwardly when I move my arms.
  • Books – I’m pushing myself through Charles Stross’ Glasshouse, which for me had a slow start but picked up in chapter 9, so I can get to Lev Grossman’s The Magician King, which I checked out a few days ago when my turn finally came up in the hold queue. The first book in that series was so good that I’m expecting to glide through this one in a few days.
  • Video games – I’ve been missing Minecraft the past few weeks, so I’ve been listening to the soundtrack a lot, and this weekend I rebelled and played some when I should’ve been doing other things like sleeping. For anyone who cares, I’m on a long trek through the Nether from my temporary starting base to the location I’ve planned for the central base in my network of biome-related homes, which is the point of this world, and I might post an article or video about it someday so you can see what I’m talking about. I also sometimes wish I could get into other games, such as RuneScape, so I can get more involved with the people I hang out with online, but I don’t know when that would happen.
  • Religion – My holding pattern between faith and doubt and my general spiritual inaction have been wearing on me for a while, and my mind is slowly drifting toward the idea of doing something to move in some direction. For now that would mostly take the form of journaling so I can work out what I think I need and what next steps would be most helpful, and I’ve decided to put my morning meditation on hold, since it’s only been helping me in a very limited way, and replace it with some kind of actual devotions.
  • Dusk – It’s not a forest preserve, but I found some pretty clouds during one of my parking lot meals.

    The clouds kind of match the towers.

    A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

Posted in Daily routine, Devotions, Diet, Dusk, Exercise, Math relearning, Project updates, Spirituality, Video games | 4 Comments

Update for 8/28/2016

Posted on August 29, 2016 by Andy

Project updates

    • Math relearning – The explanation of my programming project is getting kind of long, and I still have more to write that’ll take a few more days, but hopefully I can post that this week. This explanation is mostly a rebuttal to some objections to this new direction I’m taking my math relearning. It was fun on Wednesday to have dinner with my antagonist on this project (who shall remain nameless but it starts with J) and learn more about his reservations so I can maximize his humiliation in my public refutation. I know he’s looking forward to that.
    • Life maintenance
      • Diet – My boss was chagrined that I hadn’t read Taubes’ Why We Get Fat, one of the main books in support of low-carb dieting, so I checked out the audiobook and finished it today, and I have to say it’s more compelling than the arguments I see put forward online, though I also want to look more into people’s responses to him. I’d already been thinking of trying low-carb again sometime after I switch medications, and Taubes has made that idea more of a plan, especially since I lost weight much quicker on my low-carb diet than I have been on TLC, though I still have to see what happens to my lipids.
      • Illness – Thursday evening I got the short-term illness that’s happened to me occasionally since my ulcerative colitis started, where I get chills for a couple of hours, take a nap, then feel feverish and lethargic for a few hours, and in the morning feel better, except for maybe a headache, as in this case. Neither my primary doctor nor my gastroenterologist knows what this is, but my boss wonders if the cause could be leaky gut syndrome, which is one of those folk diseases that may or may not be real. I might go to convenient care (a walk-in doctor’s office) during one of these episodes to see what they can tell me.
      • Exercise – The sickness plus extra sleep deprivation that week threw off some of my other activities, and I’m going to blame that for my lack of exercise this weekend, but otherwise I’ve been doing my walks every day. I will get around to more weight training, but I don’t feel much urgency about it, and I haven’t even worked out how to fit it comfortably into my schedule, so I’ve been procrastinating.
      • Daily routine – My sleep schedule was a disaster last week, but of course I’ll try again this week, because while diet and exercise only have subtle effects on me, sleep is the one lifestyle factor that makes an immediate and dramatic difference in the quality of my day, especially when it comes to my mood, productivity, and outlook on life.
    • Media
      • Books – Beggars in Spain was very good to the end, and even though Jeremy wasn’t impressed with the rest of the series, I want to see what comes next, so I’ll be listening to at least the next book. Cassandra Campbell has made it onto my list of favorite readers, especially with her rendition of Miranda Sharifi, my favorite character.
      • Movies – Sunday Tim and I got together with the Keevers again for part 2 of our Star Wars marathon, the prequels, which I remembered much better than the originals. We decided to end after episodes 1 and 2, and next time we’ll conclude with episodes 3 and 7, the latter of which Jeremy’s family hasn’t seen. After the movies Jeremy laid out his complaints about episode 2, which was a much different movie than he wanted to see, and I could sort of see his point, though as a minimal fan I didn’t go into the prequels with a lot of expectations, so the only problem I really had was with the stiltedness of some of the dialogue and its delivery, but Jeremy’s comments made me wonder what kinds of prequels other disappointed fans would’ve written, and I found quite a few (and here are some more).
    • Dusk – My walk on Friday was in the evening, and I decided to do it at forest preserve 3, where a bunch of birds were hanging out on the rocks along the shore.

The bird council of forest preserve 3.

A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

Life updates

  • Car – For about a month my engine had been rasping and rattling, and I finally got around to taking it to my mechanic, who said I must’ve run over something, because a pipe connected to a converter had been ripped up and was letting in exhaust or something. So he replaced the pipe and managed to salvage the oxygen sensor that was in there, so that saved me a bit of money, and now my car is quiet again, and that is one of the best feelings.
Posted in Books, Car, Daily routine, Diet, Dusk, Exercise, Health, Life updates, Math relearning, Movies, Programming, Project updates, Sleep | 2 Comments