The Column

Motto: Google is God There's a Google product you should know about; it's called Google Takeout . It  is not a food service, so don't get excited. Don't make the same joke that literally 5 people I've told about this have made. Google Takeout is a service that allows you to take out  your data from Google - in theory so that you could go to some other service and keep your data. In reality, it's probably best just for seeing an aggregate list of everything they have of yours and about you. I requested an archive of everything they had associated with my account, leaving out Google Drive (because I have 500GB+ in the cloud & don't need them to send me my own files back to me) . Then I spent a week's worth of free time going through it all & taking 5 full pages of notes about what I found. This post is primarily the contents of those notes. Now, before we get into that. I am pro-Google. I use or have used almost every one of their publ...

Motto: Opportunity Missed Remember how I said I want to write a book, and how I might dump stuff on here that's from the book? This is counting. ----------------------- start snippet  -----------------------  1.1                Counting Counting is the most important thing you'll ever learn in school. Everything in math is goes back to counting. Everything in physics we describe in terms of math, which goes back to counting. Everything in chemistry is attributable to physics, which is described in terms of math, which goes back to counting. Biology is just applied chemistry. Sociology is just applied biology. All of it goes back to counting. Counting is a fundamental element of science. We count using numbers. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Zero One Two Three Four Five ...

Motto: Free the Beast I want to write a book.  I don't to write a book so that I can "I'm a guy who's written a book", but because I have something have I wanted to create since 2011, right before I graduated college. I've have vague and specific ideas about this thing I want to write. 8 years ago I started a Word doc to get some thoughts down. I've sat down many evenings since then and added to it. Right now it's a 57 pages... of mostly just outlines for content to come. The struggle I'm having is how to describe what I want the book to be. I want to write a study guide for every test I've ever taken.  I want to make a reference book that also teaches fundamental concepts.  I want to explain the concepts I learned in school how I wish they'd have been explained to me. I want to be funny. I want to be serious. I want to have something to give my son that teaches him what I've learned over the past 30 years. I want to cov...

Motto: This Column was Meant to be about Many Topics I have been thinking some about how stupid our conventions are for times and dates. I wonder if I could come up with something better. This Column is basically a thought experiment, as it progresses. The year is (roughly) 365 and 1/4 days long. We break that up into 52 weeks, each 7 days long.  52 x 7 = 364 So inherently we've got a flaw there.  The prime factorization of 365 is 73 x 5. So we COULD do 73 weeks, each 5 days long. Of course, then our structure for "weekday" and "weekend" would be all messed up. People would either have to work 4 days a week (8.6% more than a standard work week now) or 3 days a week (11.4% less) . Also any sort of social structure that's set up to operate "every other day" would have a weird time dealing with weekends. BUT!  A year isn't 5 x 73 days long, either. It's more like 5 x 73 + 0.2422 days long. So, no set number of days would make a...

Motto: Do You Have Any Apple Fritters? I read an article ( like this one ) about a psychology study in which the takeaway was: telling somebody you were going to achieve a goal, made you less likely to achieve that goal. I thought "I should stop telling people I'm going to do things before I do them!" Then I promptly pulled open my messaging app and typed a message to my wife saying:  "I think I'm going to stop telling you about things I want to do to better myself befo" ... Then I realized the irony of the message, and pressed 'delete' instead of 'send'. I say it here because I thought it was funny. You ever make a table like this? If you haven't, maybe think about doing it.  Or don't. I expected it to be more enlightening than it was. I have a Podcast. It's got  a website  in case you're not interested in Podcast apps... it's nothing fancy. Just a thing we do for fun. Top 5: Things I Learned About Co...

Motto: OH BOO HOO You ever fall out of your groove? It's funny how doing one little thing can start a domino effect.  I didn't feel like cooking, so we ate out for dinner. Because we ate out, I don't have leftovers. Because I don't have leftovers, I have to buy my lunch. Because I have to buy my lunch, I don't get home as early as I would like to. Because I don't get home as early as I would like to, I don't have time to make dinner. Because I didn't make dinner, I don't have leftovers... ...or another real-world loop... Because I haven't worked out, I've gotten lethargic. Because I've gotten lethargic, I haven't wanted to clean. Because I haven't wanted to clean, the place is dirty. Because the place is dirty, I misplaced my keys. Because I misplaced my keys, I waste 20 minutes looking for them. Because I wasted 20 minutes, I leave during the morning rush. Because I leave during the morning rush, my commute ta...

Motto: Oh Boo-Hoo I've been first-world struggling lately. Five and one-third years ago I wrote a Column about technological ecosystems. This is that table, updated for today: See those green highlights? That's what I'm using nowadays. Do you know how frustrating it is to have an iPhone and not use Safari, MacOS, Apple Maps, Airplay, iTunes, Apple Music, and Siri (I use Siri in some situations because I have to)? Using an iPhone, a Windows Desktop, and mostly Google services is not what you want to do. See the Top 5 for more whining. Somewhat related: It's crazy to me that I can't tell my Google Home what word(s) I want to say to get its attention. I'm not living in the future until I can say "Hey Jarvis", or "Okay Computer", or "Yo Black Mirror" when I want to know what temperature it will be today. Google's forcing the "Okay Google" or "Hey Google" to be the wakeword has literally interject...