I just realized I went almost a year without taking vacation and it was the stupidest thing I’ve done in my career. Thanks to a couple trips this month it turns out I’m only working half of August and I’m feeling way less burnt out than I’ve felt in months. No more “stocking up for …
Category Archives: personal
I’ll miss you, Brad
“I try to be my own hero. That may sound flippant, but 15 years ago when I was really trying to grasp a direction for my life, a friend wise beyond his years reminded me that no one is perfect, that heroes fall and white knights on horseback are rare. Instead, he said, I should …
Adventures in brain tumors: part one of many
You know it's going be bad news when the ER doc slides a chair over to sit on. Good news is quick, a simple "You're gonna be fine! You can go home!" Seeing that chair slide over with her let me know I was in for some long explanations of bad news. Of course …
Continue reading “Adventures in brain tumors: part one of many”
Cling Clang Clang
Four years into parenthood, I want to look back and say stability is very important. As much as you can, try and be stable people, with a stable marriage, keeping a stable home, holding stable jobs, with stable schedules. The cornerstone of our stability as a family is our nighttime ritual, which rarely changes. At …
Trying something new
I’ve been meaning to redesign this site for a while, to set aside more screen space for writing, both to make it easier to read longer pieces for readers but also to help me focus more on just plain old writing instead of all the other junk I used to keep here. As I sat …
Ten Years
In spring of 1995, while using a borrowed computer (I didn’t own one myself) in the undergraduate lab, I noticed a new icon in the main window. It was a blue globe with a snake-like S shape around it. It was labeled Mosaic. It was an early version and you couldn’t type addresses in the …
woot
A few weeks ago, an editor at the NYT contacted me asking if I wanted to write gadget reviews for the thursday tech section. I was floored by the opportunity and jumped at the chance. After pitching a few ideas, I got one greenlighted and spent a couple days testing the product out. My first …
Modern living
I can’t begin to describe how happy I am to see that the next This Old House project is a rennovation of a modern house. I’m a longtime fan of the show, and even though lately it’s become a show with too many field trips and high-dollar makeovers and not enough actual tips and how-tos, …
Going fallow
I noticed it in myself several weeks ago. I hadn’t touched my camera in two weeks and I had no desire to snap anything when I did pick it up. Then I noticed that I don’t the time or motivation to write up all the ideas that are percolating in my head. Then I noticed …
Webvisions
Tomorrow morning I’ll be speaking at WebVisions 2005 about convergence and digital devices — all the cool ways small gadgets can talk to one another thanks in part to open standards and lots of hacking. Webvisions is my favorite “small tech conference that’s almost as worthwhile as an expensive multi-day big tech conference” conference. It’s …
A Whole Lotta Nothing 