14 Years on WordPress

Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.com Recently, I was notified that I passed my 14th anniversary on WordPress, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to give WordPress a plug here. I switched… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 1 year ago

Winter Cleaning

Photo by Mike B on Pexels.com While on winter break I decided to tackle some winter cleaning that I’ve put off for years. I decided to clean up my files and data and organize them into someth… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 1 year ago

A Quick Check-In

I am on vacation with the family, but I wanted to check-in quickly to let you know that posting should resume here as planned once I am back from vacation. Next week I’ll have a post on some … | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

My Best Reads of 2022

Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com With 2022 now behind us, I can safely post my list of 10 best reads of the year, without excluding any potential late-comers. This is actually the second dra… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

Goals for 2023

Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com Over the years I have spent quite a bit of times on various experiments. In the 2010s, I considered the idea of the paperless office, embraced Evernote as a tool… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

The Essayist

Photo by picjumbo.com on Pexels.com I. The Fiction Writer There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but ther are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, tranform a yell… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

My Guilty Pleasure Reading List

Photo by Paul Deetman on Pexels.com It is getting close to December which means close to our end-of-year holiday which means time I spend reading for guilty pleasure after a year of serious, hardco… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

On the Pronunciation of Words as a Demonstration of Synecdoche

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com In eighth grade my English teacher[1. Name withheld. The only person I intend to embarrass here is myself.] told us that the figure of speech by which a part represen… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

A Simple, Unified Reading List in Obsidian Publish

Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com Recently, I have been working on simplifying my notes in Obsidian[1. Details in a future post.]. One of the things I have wanted to do for a while is make th… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

Twitter Meltdown, Mastodon, and the End of Social Media (for Me)?

Photo by greenwish _ on Pexels.com I Sometime in 1993 or early 1994 I had this great idea for a science fiction story: what if television suddenly went away? All of the devices across the globe sud… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

Some of the Best Things I’ve Read Online in 2022

Photo by Matheus Bertelli on Pexels.com Preamble My reading divides itself up into 3 general buckets: Books Magazine articles Online posts and articles When asked how I manage to read so much, my g… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

Fall Colors, 2022

It is finally beginning to look like fall around here, so I thought I’d share a few photos of the fall colors. The first photo below is from a week or so ago on my morning walk. The colors se… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

The Best Self-Paced Course I’ve Ever Taken

Photo by JESHOOTS.com on Pexels.com Last week on Twitter Tiago Forte asked the question, “What is the best ‘self-paced’course you’ve ever taken? And why?” My brief ans… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

The Joy, Frustration and Dread of Knowing the Future

Photo by Gantas Vaičiulėnas on Pexels.com History is one of my favorite subjects. Reading it, however, occasionally fills me with feelings of frustration and dread. For instance, I am currently rea… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

More Graceful Art

When my kids were little, they thought I was so cool. Now that my older kids are pre-teens and teenagers, I think they want their money back. Every now and then however, a bit of that old coolness … | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

Revamping My Morning Routine

Photo by Gareth Davies on Pexels.com A few months ago, I sat down with a notebook and completely revamped my morning routine. I’ve gone through several iteration of this routine over the year… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

5 Index Cards

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Recently I have been carrying 5 index cards in the back of my Field Notes notebook as a way of jotting down reading notes for audiobooks and magazine articles. Jottin… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

What’s Been Keeping Me Busy: A Book Collection Database in Obsidian

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com A while back I mentioned on Twitter that I wanted to catalog all of the books in my collection. I was looking for the best tool to do the job the way I wanted to do i… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

Writing in Cursive

A few pages (in cursive) from my journal during our vacation in Ireland this summer. I learned to write in cursive beginning in 2nd grade. I can still remember that pretty clearly. We had sheets of… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

One Month of Random Article Reading

Earlier in the month, I wrote about one small way I am battling decision fatigue: I wrote a script to select one random article from the magazines I read. Each morning, I run my script, find out wh… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

Notes on a Colonoscopy

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Back in February when I had my annual physical and was not yet 50 years old, my doctor said it was time for me to have a colonoscopy for screening purposes. I said, &… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

A Few Updates

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán on Pexels.com It has been quiet here on the blog for a few week, but that’s because things have been busy lately. I figured I’d jump in here to say that, yes… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

Boswell or Gibbon?

My editions of Boswell and Gibbon. Recently, in my reading, both James Boswell and Edward Gibbon keep popping up. Boswell’s Life of Johnson is frequently referred to as the ultimate in biogra… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

There Is Blood on This Essay

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Over the weekend, while visiting a friend from high school, I learned of the horrifying revelations of grooming and abuse in my high school program in the time just a… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

The Complete David McCullough

About half of my David McCullough books. On August 28 I finished reading The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough. It was a milestone read in that it was the last remaining McCullough book I h… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

Presidential Traits

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com When I read I am always trying to learn. In particular, I try to take practical, actionable lessons from my reading, especially when reading biographies. Recently, I … | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

Battling Decision Fatigue: An Article a Day

My morning random article reading on the deck. I don’t know about you but I have been afflicted with decision fatigue for a long time now. Some of it comes from my job as a software project m… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

My 2022 Fall Reading List

I try to reading 8-10 books per month. With school starting on Monday, and summer winding down, I’ve started to think about what I want to read in the fall. Much of my reading is dictated by … | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 2 years ago

Mount To-Be-Read and the Danger of the Doubling Charm

There is a scene in one of the Harry Potter films where Harry and his friends end up in a treasure vault which has been boobie-trapped with a “Gemino Curse,” a variant of the Doubling C… | Continue reading


@jamierubin.net | 3 years ago