Update for 4/4/2016

Posted on April 5, 2016 by Andy

A couple of days late again because on Sunday I couldn’t be bothered to do anything responsible after church, and yesterday I went to sleep practically right after dinner. I’m also trying to make these updates shorter because my long update last week scared me off of doing them a little, so I want to write less so it gets done and without taking all week. I’m not sure I wrote less this week.

Project updates

  • Math relearning – I finished the introductory material for the EngageNY curriculum, and I am finally ready to enter preschool. So hide your collections of 5 or fewer items unless you want them ruthlessly counted!
  • Daily routine – I stuck to my evening schedule decently last week, though I had lots of interruptions, and I want to be extra careful to follow it this week so I don’t give up on the whole idea. I’ll wait to write about it on the wiki till I’ve had a few more weeks of experience. I’ve added a routine for Saturdays, and Sundays I think I’ll leave for doing whatever, other than these updates. I’ve also added a schedule for my workdays, which nicely breaks up the monotony and highlights the need for focus. If I only have an hour to work on something, it becomes very obvious to me when I’ve gotten too sidetracked.
  • Books
    • I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, mostly during walks and household tasks. It’s a wide-ranging treatment of a question I’ve had for most of my life: Why has the West dominated the world? It’s dense with historical details, which are hard for me to follow, so I’ve been listening for main ideas.
    • During my devotions I’ve begun reading Colors of Goodbye by September Vaudrey, about her journey through grief after losing her remarkable daughter to a car crash. It appeals to me because I want to learn how people cope with different kinds of pain and because her daughter is someone I’d like to learn from.
  • Podcasts
    • Serial season 2 just ended. You can binge listen to both seasons from their website. Serial is a journalism podcast that reports one story per season, stretched out over a dozen or so episodes. It’s fascinating and has brought the idea of podcasting to a broader audience.
    • Occasionally I try to catch up on some short story podcasts I listen to, Escape Pod and Podcastle. Last week a story that stood out to me was “The Copperroof War.” It’s the kind of story that makes me feel like a lot more stories could be told about its world, epic stories.

Life updates

  • Socializing – Last week I had meals with three different friends and a surprise conversation at the grocery store with another friend I hadn’t seen in a while. Then Sunday I got together with my friend Tim, as I usually do, and we watched Batman v Superman. I liked the movie, but I’m open to people’s criticisms of it. My favorite part was the philosophizing in the middle. If only they could’ve kept that up during the fight scenes. Anyway, this is too much socializing, and I’ve decided for the good of my projects to remove all friendship from my life. Loneliness is a small price to pay for productivity! Okay, no, loneliness is one of the worst feelings, and I would fail miserably if I tried to do that.
  • Clothes – I returned the rest of the pants I ordered and did some more in-store research at Macy’s, and now I’m ready for my next attempt at ordering. (Okay, I did it just now, but let’s pretend I wrote this two days ago.)
  • Finances
    • I finally started my taxes. I’ve gotten through the income part. H&R Block’s online software makes it easy when you use them year after year. I had so much less data to enter because they already had it.
    • My replacement credit card arrived. Being a victim of credit card fraud is a strangely mild experience. It’s almost like any other business transaction. I’m sure it’s worse for the banks and retailers, or whoever ends up losing the money.
  • Work – I’m making an ebook of a commentary series published by my current employer (of course) but written long ago by my previous employer. It was one of their major products. Kind of interesting.
  • Worship team – Our teams are on a three-week rotation, and mine played this weekend. I felt like I played with more energy than usual.
  • Death – At church they announced that the wife of one of my friends had died while they were on vacation. I’d probably met her once, but I didn’t know who they meant until they said her husband’s name. Death is always more shocking when you have some connection to the person. I don’t know the story yet, but she was pretty young. I’ll most likely go to the memorial service on Friday.
Posted in Books, Clothes, Coping, Credit card fraud, Daily routine, Death, Ebooks, Life updates, Math relearning, Movies, People, Podcasts, Project updates, Taxes, Worship performing | 2 Comments

Update for 3/27/2016

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Andy

A couple of days late, but it’s been a busy weekend, as you’ll see if you read this week’s update! I probably should’ve split this one up.

Site updates

  • Blog – I blogged and posted to the wiki about mental focus. That was last week’s main project. It took longer than I expected because even though most of the wiki article had already been written, it was long and took a lot of reading time to organize and revise.
  • Wiki comments – No progress last week, as I expected. This week doesn’t look likely either, so I’m taking it off the agenda for now, though I may randomly decide to work on it. It can be a surprise.

Project updates

  • Math relearning – No real progress last week on this either, but I’m squeezing it in a bit this week because I absolutely don’t want to lose sight of it. Math is important for so many of my projects and goals.
  • Cognitive science – And nothing here, except that I’ve decided to collect a bunch of cog sci links on the wiki to get a sense of the field.
  • Daily routine – I mentioned this briefly as an afterthought in last week’s update, but on Monday I set up a schedule for my weekday evenings, and it’s turning out to be one of the best things I’ve done in a long time. I’ve been able to keep up with my routine, and to my surprise it’s significantly shaping my outlook on life. It will be the subject of an upcoming post.
  • Diet – The low-carb diet is rolling along. It’s hard to believe I’ve been at it for only three weeks. But I feel like I could keep it up for much longer. And even though weight loss isn’t my main purpose, it’s nice to see I’ve lost about 5 pounds since I started. It makes me think the diet is doing something. I managed to cook something this week, a low-carb version of the chicken tikka masala I make periodically, substituting cottage cheese for the yogurt and chopped cauliflower for the rice. It worked well.

Life updates

  • Easter – Every year at Easter I ditch my usual church to visit an Anglican church in the area that knows how to do Easter better than just about any church I’ve seen. My brother, Michael, comes too. Now that he lives far away, he even flies in to do it. Here was our Easter weekend this year.
    • Friday – I picked up my brother from the airport early Friday afternoon. On our way to our annual Good Friday Taizé service, we had lunch at a Brazilian place, which was good but rather slow getting us our food and made us slightly late. It’s a crowded place, and we ended up sitting apart. The church that holds the service is beautiful, like a miniature cathedral. Afterward we thought about trying for my church’s Good Friday service, but that would mean constant driving and service attending for the rest of the evening, since Michael was planning on yet another one later, so we decided no. With that off the agenda, we even managed to go on my regularly scheduled walk.
    • Saturday – Saturday we had lunch at Chick-fil-A, partly because I know how to eat low carb there, and then made our way to an installation art exhibit we’ve been looking forward to for about a year, Presence by David Wallace Haskins at the Elmhurst Art Museum. It’s there through May 8, so if you’re in the Chicago area, I recommend it. It will mess with your mind. My favorite pieces were Void Room, Time Mirror, and Soundcube. Void Room is best experienced without spoilers. Just know that the first room you enter isn’t all there is to it. Actually I didn’t think that much of Soundcube until the artist demoed the other tracks for us and told us his plans for it, which got me thinking about its possibilities as a sound environment. By the way, David is at the museum a lot, and he likes to talk about his work, so introduce yourself if you see him. After the exhibit, I gave my brother a tour of the board game store I visit, and then I dropped him off at the very long Easter Vigil he attends each year. They go all night now, but he came home after about three hours.
    • Sunday – I made Michael my typical low-carb breakfast of eggs with cheese and an Atkins shake, and then off we went to meet Jeremy and Heather and their family at our Anglican church. It was energetic as always, and I was even in a better mood than usual. After church we had lunch at Olive Garden, where I managed to find something low carb to order that wasn’t a salad. Jeremy’s mom even got them to adapt an appetizer for me, which was nice of her. And after lunch we were off to the airport for Michael. Heather drove, for reasons that will be explained shortly, but Jeremy came along for the ride, so the airport trip was basically a social event.
    • I never got much cleaning done. Oh well.
  • Car – The reason my friends gave us a ride to the airport was that on the way home from the board game store Saturday, I slowed down at an intersection, and my car started shuddering and sputtering, and the check engine light started flashing. Soon the engine returned to normal, but the light continued flashing, and the shaking continued intermittently whenever I drove it, along with a sporadic accelerating and decelerating, getting worse as the weekend wore on. AutoZone read the check engine code for me: P0300, random cylinder misfires. Something like this happened last year, and that time it was so worrying that I got it repaired right away. This time I had to wait a couple of days, but the Internet didn’t seem worried about the condition, so I just tolerated it and tried to drive as little as possible. It’s frustrating and embarrassing to have a car that visibly shakes while idling and struggles to accelerate through an intersection. I finally got it fixed Tuesday. Car mechanics are such a relief. And so are kind coworkers who drive me to and from the shop.
  • Dentist – My teeth are in need of a cleaning, so I’m on a quest to find a dentist! This feels more challenging to me than finding a doctor. I seem to have gotten a lot more ads for dentists than doctors in the mail over the years, and somehow that makes these dentists and the whole profession feel a little shady to me. Why do they have to tell me how great they are? Shouldn’t everyone just know? What are they trying to pull?? Fly-by-night street dentists, the lot of them! Yes, it’s silly, but it still makes me more cautious when I’m looking for one.
  • Finances – Thursday night I got an email from my bank, a credit card fraud alert. I looked at the activity on that card, and it had been compromised for about two weeks. Shows how much I pay attention. So instead of tidying up the apartment for my brother, in between trips to the laundry room I spent the next morning sorting through many months of receipts to clarify which of the recent charges were mine. Then I called the bank, went through some rigmarole to confirm my identity, and got my card canceled. So now I’m waiting for the new one and living on cash. Fortunately, last time this happened, I decided to get a separate card for online transactions, and that one’s fine. Maybe I should get a third card as a backup so I don’t have to wait next time. I decided against it last time. In any case, the incident motivated me to address some of my financial projects: updating my budget, actually using my financial software (or finding an easier one), catching up on my freelance invoices, investing, and looking into charity giving. I definitely need to do my taxes soon. That’ll be this week’s main project.
Posted in Art, Blog, Board games, Cognitive science, Cooking, Credit card fraud, Daily routine, Diet, Holidays, Life updates, Math relearning, Project updates, Site updates | Leave a comment

Do I have ADHD?

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Andy

I don’t know, but I certainly am distractible. I also don’t know if I’ve always been this way. I noticed my massive procrastination tendencies back in high school and my wandering mind while reading in college, but I don’t remember feeling so distractible until I started working at desk jobs toward the end of college. The Internet was always an easy click away. That’s why I work on my projects in my car so often. There are far fewer distractions there than practically anywhere else.

Part of me wishes I hadn’t been so quiet, well-behaved, and smart as a child. It might’ve motivated my parents to get me tested for something. As it is, I suspect myself of having a few low-grade conditions, but they haven’t even motivated me to get tested.

I definitely don’t have the hyperactive part of ADHD, just the attention deficit, so there’s a lot I can’t identify with in descriptions of people with the condition. I don’t have meltdowns, for example. But I don’t think I really hyperfocus either, though I can focus for long periods in the right (troublingly rare) circumstances. And I rarely lose things or forget obligations. I do, however, get a lot of ideas, and I have poor follow-through on my personal projects, though that’s more from distraction by other ideas and less from avoiding boring work.

I wrestle with my distractability daily. I wonder about ADHD occasionally. What brought on these reflections this time was finding How to ADHD’s YouTube channel via Twitter on Wednesday. She creates entertaining and helpful videos on managing ADHD in yourself or your child. I decided that even if I don’t have it, I can benefit from some of the ADHD advice people give. So the next day I searched YouTube and listened to some videos of techniques for focusing with ADHD (at work, of course). I actually got a decent amount done that day.

This has all prompted me to post on the wiki some reflections on focus I’ve collected. The article is in a rather blobby, meandering form right now, since I wrote it by basically journaling over a period of time. I’ll probably be rewriting and adding to it in the future.

Also, happy Holy Saturday!

Posted in Focus, Site updates | 6 Comments

Update for 3/20/2016

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Andy

This is a more typical update where I tell you how little I got done on my projects and how many extraneous things I did. (The post date says 3/21 because I published this just after midnight.)

Site updates

  • Blog – I blogged several times last week to kick off this series of updates. That took up a decent amount of the week. If you missed them, here’s part 1, part 2, and part 3. I got another post pretty much written, but it will come with an associated wiki article that’s not ready yet, so I’m going to finish that and post it all this week.
  • Wiki comments – I’m adding the ability to comment on some of the wiki articles. In principle this was my main project for the week. In practice I only made a decent start. But I think I can get it done by the end of next week. This week there will be interruptions.

Project updates

  • Math – I got a few more sections read of the intro to the P-5 part of the EngageNY curriculum. I’m about halfway through it now. Then I’ll start on preschool! Maybe I should sit in on a preschool class to throw myself more fully into the experience. (Just kidding.)
  • Video games – I installed Dxtory, a video game recording program, on my Surface, where I play most of my virtual board games, so I can record them and study my losses. Then I recorded two games of Splendor and proceeded to win them both. Last week I also got back into Minecraft, picking up on my Skyblock world where I left off all those months ago. I still knew exactly what I was working on and how to do everything I needed. Minecraft is like riding a bike, it seems. I completed my main task, which was building an enclosed village. Next I’ll need villagers for it, so I’ll need to cure some zombie villagers.
  • TV – I’m taking a break from Sarah Jane to watch season 2 of Daredevil, which came out on Netflix on Friday. I’ve watched one episode so far, and it was good, as I’d expect.
  • Books – There was a sale at Half Price Books last week through today, and I dropped in on Saturday because I was in the area. I’m in a phase where I basically have all the books I’m looking for, so I wasn’t expecting to find anything interesting, but I ended up buying three. First, I’m on the lookout for books on games that don’t need much equipment, so one book I picked up was Gladstone’s Games to Go. Somehow I managed to cram it into my board game box. Another was Kahney’s biography on Jony Ive. Ive is inspiring to me as a designer and innovator. I read this profile of him about a year ago and have wanted to read this book since then. I don’t know if I’ll try to read it all at once, but I thought it’d be nice to have around to browse through whenever I wanted some motivation. Then there was How Buildings Work by Edward Allen, a book I hadn’t heard of but which fills a gap in my architecture collection. It talks about the basic functions a building has to perform and how our mechanisms for fulfilling them work, such as heating, lighting, and plumbing. I went back tonight to buy a book on EMDR techniques, but it seems someone else got to it first. So I looked around some more and found The Writer’s Adventure, a book of creative writing prompts. I’m looking for writing prompts, but I decided against buying it because I didn’t want to fill my shelves with somewhat obscure titles when there were probably more popular options I could borrow from a library or read online. The Writer’s Digest site has a lot of prompts, for example.
  • Productivity – I’m thinking of trying to create more of a routine for my evenings. I usually fail at this, but maybe I haven’t tried hard enough. I’ll see what I can come up with this week. I especially want to block out a large chunk of time each day for project work.

Life updates

  • Clothes – Over the past few months I’ve been gradually replacing half my wardrobe. Buying clothes is stressful for me, but it’s also been kind of fun. Except for the pants. I have the hardest time finding dress pants I want to wear. I want a couple of black pairs (the easy part), a couple of blue that don’t look like black, a medium gray that also doesn’t look like black, and a brown that looks more like chocolate than sand. That last one is apparently too much to ask. The one I ordered looked black–dark chocolate, you could say. I returned it yesterday. Then today I tried on my new black pants and spent an infuriating few minutes wrestling with the button at the waist. It actually hurt my finger. A few minutes unfastening one’s pants doesn’t work for someone who sometimes has bathroom emergencies. Hence the rage. How dare Croft & Barrow trap me in my own pants! And I’m not going to wait for the buttons to get broken in or whatever. These pants are all going back to the store. I need to find pants with a hook closure like the ones I’ve been wearing. I would reorder my usual brand, John Blair, but it seems like they make every size but mine now.
  • Easter – My brother is visiting for Easter again. It’s an annual tradition I look forward to. We’ll go to our usual Taizé service, an art exhibit we’ve been looking forward to, and our usual Easter morning service. He’ll probably go to half a dozen other services that I’ll skip. So this week I’ll spend some time cleaning up the apartment before he gets here. I’ll try not to let it eat up all my time.
  • Worship performing – On Saturday I got a surprise request to substitute for a sick pianist at our church’s other site. I said yes, since I had no conflicting obligations. So that was my morning today. I’d forgotten that they have the pianist do complicated things on the electric keyboard now, and there were some intros I wasn’t used to. So it wasn’t as easy as I was expecting, but I managed. And I got most of this post written in the hour or so between the rehearsal and the service.
  • Diet – The first two or three weeks of my low-carb diet were really just a lower-carb diet because I wasn’t that interested in following Atkins exactly. But I’ve decided I want to try a more authentic Atkins experience, so I’m being stricter about it now and cheating much less. I’m in the very restricted phase 1 for another week or two, 20g of net carbs per day. My boss likes Atkins, so we have a lot of conversations about it. It’s amazing how much there is to say about a diet. I might ramble in a separate post sometime. If I have time this week, I want to use the phase 1 ingredient lists to come up with a standard salad or casserole I can make easily. I also need to start taking walks again. I’m sure that’ll go into my plan for my evening routine.
Posted in Blog, Books, Clothes, Cooking, Exercise, Holidays, Life updates, Math relearning, Nutrition, Productivity, Project updates, Site updates, TV, Video games, Wiki, Worship performing, Writing | 2 Comments

Update for 3/13/2016, part 3

Posted on March 16, 2016 by Andy

This is the last part of an initial weekly update on my site, my projects, and my life. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here. Future updates will usually only take up one post.

Life updates

  • Drawing Nearer – In January and February I attended a seven-week class at church on spiritual formation. It revolved around practicing disciplines of our choice from Adele Calhoun’s Spiritual Disciplines Handbook. Largely because of this freedom, it was the best class of this kind I’ve taken. I’m still practicing the discipline of fixed-hour prayer I managed to do consistently, and I’m still motivated to work out how to get myself to do the others I had in mind.
  • Humira – In December I started taking this medication for my ulcerative colitis, since none of the other eight or so medications I’d tried have completely worked. This one hasn’t either, though we doubled the dose a few weeks ago, and last week things seemed to be improving. I don’t know if that was the Humira or the low-carb diet, which I hear is supposed to reduce inflammation. Fortunately I haven’t had any side effects, not even itching at the injection sites.
  • Birthday games – Monday of last week was my birthday (I’m 38 now), and the day before I met up with some friends to play board games, mostly from my box. It was rather rude of them to beat the birthday boy every single time. Heather won most of them. But I didn’t mind. When I’m playing games, my main goal is not to come in last, or at least not to lose by too much.
  • Worship team brunch – All the worship teams at our church had a potluck brunch on Saturday. I had a really nice time there, though I learned that one of my favorite families at the church is moving out of the area this summer. I’d hoped I could get to know them better, so that was disappointing. But they’ll be living near my sister, and that makes them feel not so far away. This gathering was one in a clump of socializing. Sunday night our Drawing Nearer class had a get together, and I’ve had lunch with friends three days in the past week, which is unusual for me. Normally I eat lunch alone in my car, except on most Fridays when I play with our lunch gaming group.
  • Video games – After a long break, I’m getting back into playing video games a little, other than the virtual board games I was already playing. In that category I’ve played a lot of Splendor since the lunch group introduced me to it a few weeks ago. Since joining Steam, games have become like books for me–I’ve bought way more than I’ve used. Since I don’t want to spend all my time on them, I’ve decided not to worry about getting the most out of each game, and I’m trying out juggling several games at any one time, cycling through a little bit of each whenever I feel I can spare time for gaming. Lately it’s been Stardew Valley, The Sims 4, The Talos Principle, and soon to be Minecraft. I’m looking forward to getting back into Minecraft. I’ve been a little nostalgic for it lately.
  • Freelancing – I do some freelance work occasionally, and a job might be coming up soon, which will delay some of my projects. But it’ll hopefully give me a chance to explore an XML format called DITA that I’ve wanted to get into for years.
Posted in Birthdays, Board games, Freelancing, Health, Life updates, People, Spirituality, Video games | 4 Comments

Update for 3/13/2016, part 2

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Andy

This is part 2 of a three-part initial weekly update on my site, my projects, and my life. Part 1 is here. Future updates will probably only take up one post.

Project updates

In progress

  • Cognitive science field research – I’m reading Bermúdez’s Cognitive Science. I’ve paused in my reading to survey the book by reading all the chapter summaries, which give a decent idea of the contents while making me want to read for the details. Right now I mainly want to know the scope of the field–what questions does it ask, and what does it not? Other than that I’m collecting schools to evaluate and online sources to watch for regular updates on the field. I also want to get an idea of who’s who and what professional options cognitive scientists have. Getting to know a new field is kind of fun!
  • Math relearning – I’m gearing up to work through the EngageNY curriculum, starting all the way at the beginning with preschool. But first I’m reading yet more meta documents, the front matter to the P-5 section of the curriculum, which is titled A Story of Units. I’m not commenting on this one like I did with the Progressions. I want to get an idea of the writers’ approach to math education, but I don’t want to spend very long on it.
  • Diet – Yes, I’m finally taking the plunge into a low-carb diet–as an experiment. I refuse to commit to it as some sort of cultish philosophy! A while back I read that a low-carb diet could help with high cholesterol, and we have a wellness screening at work in about six weeks, so I’m trying the diet to see what happens. I’m using The New Atkins for a New You as a guide. At some point I’ll probably use the diet as an excuse to write a little nutrition program I’ve had in mind for years.
  • Board game box – For the past few months I’ve been assembling a box of board game systems, which are sets of generic components that can be used to play multiple games. I’ve collected all the systems I want for now, other than some simple RPGs I’ll put in the binder of rules. Now I’m waiting on a book on card games I ordered, and with the help of my friend Jeremy I’m making an index of the games so it’s easier to decide what to play. At some point I’ll write an explanation of the box for the wiki.
  • Nostalgia box – This box is ridiculously close to being done. I just have to attach the decorative paper to the folders and make a label for each month, and then I can start using it. I’ll post an explanation on the wiki for this one too.
  • Doctor Who – I’m in the middle of catching up on the modern seasons of Doctor Who and its spinoffs, a project that will take months because I’m many years behind. Right now I’m in season 2 of The Sarah Jane Adventures, which is at the tail end of the 10th Doctor. My goal is to be caught up by December, which is when the next new episode airs. Then I can participate in the hype like the fan I claim to be. I’ll post my watching order on the wiki.

Planned

  • Programming – A few programming ideas have been percolating in my mind forever, and I’d like to start on them soon: a database convenience library, a feed reader, and a mnemonic substitute dictionary.
  • Videos – I’ve also been wanting to make some videos for a while. I feel a bit out of my depth here, so I’ll need to practice some. I’ll also need to get over my perfectionism and get used to watching myself.
  • Drawing, creative writing – I’ve had a vague desire to get back into these. Maybe I’ll start dabbling sometime in the next couple of months.
Posted in Board games, Career, Cognitive science, Doctor Who, Drawing, Math relearning, Nutrition, Programming, Project updates, Videos, Writing | 2 Comments

Update for 3/13/2016, part 1

Posted on March 13, 2016 by Andy

I’m trying something new. Each week I’ll post an update on my projects, the site, or my life, whichever one or more of those I have something to say about. It’s mainly meant for progress reports, since I probably won’t have project contents to post every week. These updates will probably have really boring titles, like today’s. When I post a major update, I’ll call it something more interesting.

This update idea came from a couple of sources. First, I wanted to post more often without distracting myself too much from my main projects. I don’t like to keep people hanging about things I’ve said I’m working on, and I don’t like posting nothing as if I’ve forgotten about the site. But writing a coherent post about a new topic can take a lot of time, which delays my projects. And then I end up with a blog full of posts about side issues while my main concerns hide in the wings. I’ll still post about random things if they occur to me, just not as a strategy for posting more often.

Second, I wanted to follow David Allen’s advice to do a weekly review of my projects to keep my priorities in mind. I’m way too easily distracted by new ideas and events in my life. Sometimes they do need to take precedence over what I was working on before, but I need to be purposeful about those shifts. Posting my reviews will help keep me accountable.

I’ll try to post these on Sundays, but for this first one I have more to talk about than usual and not enough time to think through it all today, so I’ll post it over the next couple of days. Today I’ll post the site updates.

Site updates

  • Wiki comments – I’m adding the ability to comment on articles in the wiki. I’m aiming to use the PageDisqus extension, but I want it to add a comment section only on pages I tell it to rather than everywhere except the pages I exclude. To do that I’ll incorporate some code from AvbDisqus.
  • Topic tour – I’d started to write some short starter articles for the wiki I was calling seeds, but I decided a single overview of everything would be better. I’ll still write the seeds, but the overview feels more important. It’s helpful to me to step back and look at the big picture, and in this case it’ll be helpful to remind myself of the sources that deal with these topics; this tour will partly be an annotated bibliography. It’ll probably be a long time before I post it. I want to think through it carefully and get it mostly right before posting, and I’ll largely work on it alongside other projects rather than taking a long stretch of time to focus on it.

There will probably be two more parts to this update, one for projects and one for life.

Posted in Blog, Site updates, Wiki | 4 Comments

From computer science to …

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Andy

Many months ago I read an article on Douglas Hofstadter, a name I’d heard since high school when my friend read Gödel, Escher, Bach. At the time I thought he was probably one of those overrated thinkers who writes inspiring, popular, but empty books. And I thought that all the way up until I read that article, “The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think,” and soon after, “An interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter.” I learned that we seem to share a paradigm of artificial intelligence that’s out of style right now, one based more on semantics than on statistics. I hadn’t even known he worked in AI or that it was the subject of GEB.

So I looked up where he worked–University of Indiana Bloomington (okay, bump that one way up my list). Not in the computer science department, though–in cognitive science. Well, whatever. Maybe I could still interact with him if I ended up there, if he hasn’t retired and moved away by that point.

After finding the articles, from time to time I’d look a little more into his research group, The Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition. I bought GEB, made a note of his other books, set up a Google alert for news about him, and searched for his doctoral students on social media. Then on a whim a couple of weeks ago I took a closer look at his field, cognitive science. I’d heard of it in connection with AI, but it seemed like a hazy subject, and I’d disregarded it.

Now I visited the site of the Cognitive Science Society and read their mission statement: to foster cooperation among fields such as “Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Anthropology, Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Education.” I did a mental double-take. They’d just listed half my interests. And their definition of cognitive science reminded me of what I’ve recently come to see as one of my primary agendas, to understand the mind.

I was intrigued, and the researchy wheels of my mind immediately started spinning. Could this be a home for me? I had to learn more! So I’ve decided to investigate cognitive science as a possible career field instead of computer science. It’s only a slight shift, since the two overlap, but it might be a better fit. I bought an intro textbook, José Luis Bermúdez’s Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Science of the Mind, which I’ve been reading; made a list of key questions about the field; and began to search for grad programs. As I learn, I’m making a list of pros and cons. I’ll probably post my assessment once I have a better sense of the issues. But it looks promising.

Posted in Career, Cognitive science, Grad school, Life updates | 9 Comments

Common Core Math Progressions complete

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Andy

It’s about a month later than I’d planned, but I’ve finished reading the Common Core Math Progressions. I’ve posted my thoughts on them in the Math Relearning project, along with a few thoughts on the Mathematical Practice standards. I was going to take a break before plunging into the actual curriculum, but it turns out I’m a little too eager to get started on the actual math learning, so I’m going to try to read the curriculum alongside the other projects I had on the agenda for my break, such as taxes and another project I’ll post about in the new few days.

I haven’t forgotten about wanting to post every week or so during longer projects. I just haven’t figured out how to get that schedule to work yet. But I’m going to start by modifying the schedule to once every two weeks. That’s how often I post when I’m more on top of it, so I’m adjusting my expectations to my actual pattern. If I can achieve that consistently, then maybe I’ll shoot for something more frequent.

Posted in Blog, Math relearning, Site updates | 4 Comments

Plans for 2016

Posted on January 1, 2016 by Andy

Ah, New Year’s. A time for pressing the restart button on life and hoping it turns out better this time.

I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions. I make plans all year long, and I happen to make some of them around the start of January. But the plans I make in January do sometimes feel special, and it’s partly because December is such a tangle of activity that when it’s over, it feels like life is opening up again and I’m freer to look at the big picture. This is one of those times. So here’s what I’m thinking.

I have some projects to continue from previous years, such as math relearning, memory improvement, and home organizing. But I’m hoping 2016 will be a chance to get to some of the projects I’ve been putting off for years, such as graphic design and the programming projects that have been piling up in my mind. I at least want more variety in my projects. I felt like 2015 was mostly spent trying to get a handle on math relearning. But while all that’s happening, I still need to keep moving on my career plans, such as figuring out exactly what specialty to go into in AI. If you follow my blog, you probably know how often my eyes are too big for my time, but for me having too many ideas is better than having too few. To my mind, ideas mean hope and happiness. And one of my priorities this year is to get more sleep, which should help me get more done.

In the near term, the next month or two, here’s what I have in mind:

  • Finish reading the math progressions. At some point I’ll post the notes I’ve been taking.
  • Finish making my nostalgia box. I’ve procrastinated on this one for a couple of years, but I’m finally ready to complete it. I’ll write more about that once it’s ready.
  • Update some things on my site and my social media accounts.
  • Write a bunch of article seeds on the wiki side of the site. These will hopefully help me write more often. I’ll explain them in a later post.

Ready, set, go!

Posted in Life updates, Projects | 1 Comment