With 2024 behind us, I can finally post my list of best reads for 2024. Each year, I have a goal of reading 100 books. [...] | Continue reading
For years, I’ve wanted a personal archive system that allows me to easily search all of my documents, email, and other information in a useful [...] | Continue reading
On December 22, 1996, I left work early to do some holiday shopping at the Northridge Fashion Center. Among the things I bought was a [...] | Continue reading
I am of two minds when it comes to spoilers. As a reader, an audience member watching a film, or a middle-aged adult playing a [...] | Continue reading
Updates here have been too few and far between. I’ve recently completed the first phase of a major personal software development project (more details to [...] | Continue reading
I haven’t been active on social media much the last few years, but when I post here on the blog, the posts are automatically pushed [...] | Continue reading
Lately, I have been working on a series of small archiving projects. I have been gathering 35 years of digital data, and organizing it locally, [...] | Continue reading
I took my first flying lesson two days before John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy were killed when their plane crashed off Martha’s Vineyard. [...] | Continue reading
We were in Europe recently for a few weeks, and spent a few days in the beautiful city of Budapest, Hungary, a city rich in [...] | Continue reading
Twice a day I take a two-and-a-half mile walk through the Bluemont Junction part of my town. I walk from our house down to the [...] | Continue reading
“Give me any random idea and I can write a story from it.” This is how I used to think of myself back when I [...] | Continue reading
When I first started keeping a diary, I did it mostly out of imitation. Isaac Asimov kept one, and I liked the idea. As he [...] | Continue reading
I know what you’re thinking. Another Substack newsletter? Yes, I have a Substack newsletter that will debut tomorrow. It’s called “The Ancient and the Ultimate” [...] | Continue reading
i. A few days ago, I finished reading The Age of Napoleon by Will Durant and Ariel Durant, the final entry in their 11-volume Story [...] | Continue reading
2024 is turning out to be the Year of the Long Book, for me at least. I generally set myself a goal of 100 books a year, but that arbitrary. Some books are barely 100 pages, while others are over 1… | Continue reading
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com I read with sadness this afternoon about the passing of the great Charles Osgood. I’m sure many people knew him from the two-plus decades he hosted the… | Continue reading
I read 101 books in 2023. I also read around 300 feature articles in magazines. What follows is my top 10 best book reads of [...] | Continue reading
Recently, I mentioned delving into the Star Trek Lit-Verse. My first foray, in that regard, was a book by Greg Cox called Captain to Captain. I enjoyed the book–it was just what I hoped I wou… | Continue reading
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Over Thanksgiving I read Patrick Stewart’s new memoir, Making It So, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Reading it put me in mind of Star Trek, even though Stewart… | Continue reading
Photo by Jonathan Petersson on Pexels.com I have an idyllic notion of life on a farm: waking up before the sun to milk cows, sow crops, mend fences, and a hundred other chores. It’s a nice dr… | Continue reading
Photo by Alejandro Quintanar on Pexels.com My grandfather was a regular reader of Natural History magazine during its heyday. I recall the magazine sitting around the table beside his chair. I woul… | Continue reading
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com It has been quiet here for too long. I can’t believe it has been over a month and a half since I last posted here. Remember when I was posting just abo… | Continue reading
Photo by Emma Li on Pexels.com It started with the September 11, 2023 issue of The New Yorker. The issue contained a fascinating feature by Elizabeth Kolbert titled, “Can We Talk to Whales?&#… | Continue reading
Photo by Tim Gouw on Pexels.com I Each morning, rain or shine, I go out for a walk. The time of my walk more or less follows sunrise throughout the year, with me getting out shortly after the first… | Continue reading
Photo by meo on Pexels.com On a recent morning, I surpassed my previous Wordle win streak with my 63rd consecutive win. Wordle is part of my morning metal warm-up routine. When I wake up, usually b… | Continue reading
The autumnal equinox officially starts on September 22 this year, but it seem like everyone around me treats Labor Day as the unofficial end of [...] | Continue reading
Whispering in the dark Information overload manifests itself like a demon in the dark. On lazy days that I spend reading for most of the day, I fall asleep at night to the whispers of passages that… | Continue reading
Sleep of the Just Plain Tired There is still light in the sky when I fall into a dreamless sleep. It is something of a miracle in its dreamless quality and in its duration. When I awaken, just afte… | Continue reading
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com A Remarkable Number It seems these days that almost every travel article I read tells me how bad air travel has gotten. Airlines are nickle-and-diming passengers. Pas… | Continue reading
Photo by Hafidz Alifuddin on Pexels.com We are recently back from 2 weeks in Europe, where we toured around Italy (Rome, Sienna, Florence, Bologna, Venice, Como), Switzerland (Engelberg, Lucerne), … | Continue reading
Photo by Iván Cauich on Pexels.com Sometimes when sitting on the deck or out on my morning walk, I wonder what this place would have sounded like 100 years ago. Our house backs up to a park and it … | Continue reading
Photo by Ivo Rainha on Pexels.com I In the beginning, there was the Franklin Township Library that my parents took me to when I was just learning to read. The bookshelves looked so tall and they we… | Continue reading
I I played my first Wordle game one year ago. This morning, I played my 365th consecutive game. It was a rare lucky day for [...] | Continue reading
Photo by Juan Pablo Serrano Arenas on Pexels.com I The pleasure of fiction, for me, is the total immersion in the story. That immersion is powerful and delicate. It is a bubble of thin film that ke… | Continue reading
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com I Flipping through the contents of various magazines and essay collections, certain titles strike me. Here is an essay on cosmology by Isaac Asimov, “I’m … | Continue reading
Photo by EG Images on Pexels.com I In the spring of 2019 I read The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner and was captivated by the descriptions of what it… | Continue reading
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com I I first heard of Will Durant, author of the 11-volume Story of Civilization, reading Isaac Asimov’s memoirs in the 1990s. In 2000, I read Durant’s The L… | Continue reading
Photo by Viktor Lundberg on Pexels.com I When I was 8 or 9 years old, my dad took a ground school course as a precursor to flying lessons. Those flying lessons never materialized, but I grew fascin… | Continue reading
For months now, I have been thinking about features that I think should be part of a modern operating system. Some of these features are [...] | Continue reading
Photo by Christina Morillo on Pexels.com Late last year I set myself some goals to tackle in 2023. These goals fell into three areas in which I am seeking improvement: (1) consolidation, (2) simpli… | Continue reading
Four lessons from four decades of note-taking In the fall, the Little Miss will be heading into 7th grade. Forty years ago, I too, was spending my summer what 7th grade would be like. In the Los An… | Continue reading
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Whenever I read a book about the encyclopedia, I am overcome by an urgent desire to read one. This is not, as it might seem, an isolated incident. It happened five ye… | Continue reading
Late last year, I set 3 goals for myself for 2023: (1) consolidate the apps that I use; (2) simplify; and (3) automate repetitive tasks. One repetitive task I’ve been dealing with for decades… | Continue reading
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com Where have I been and why have things been so quiet around here? One of my real joys is writing here and it has been too long since I last took solace in thi… | Continue reading
Photo by Lucas Seebacher on Pexels.com I got my first house key when I was eight or nine years old. It was attached to a string which I wore around my neck, making me one of the many latch-key kids… | Continue reading
Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com As readers know, I have kept a list of books I have read since 1996. (As of this writing, there are 1,241 books on the list.) Last spring, I tried to estimat… | Continue reading
I began keeping a list of all of the books I read beginning in 1996. I was almost 24 years old, and I think the inspiration to keep a list came from a list I’d seen online by someone who̵… | Continue reading
If I haven’t been writing here much it is because I’ve been doing a lot of heavy reading lately. I’ve been reading a lot about artificial intelligence lately, and that led to math… | Continue reading