Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Month: September 2018

  • A little bit of writing about writing

    I’m still not sold on the Gutenberg editor that WordPress has rolled out recently. Writing in a word processing application is the way I go about my efforts. That is pretty much the way I put words on the pages. From that blank sheet full of possibilities to this post full of middling and otherwise disappointing prose. Today was a day that lacked any clear clarity or purpose. It was a day that just sort of happened. For a lot of folks on a lot of different days that tends to happen. You just put one foot in front of the other and muddle through from start to finish. Right now I’m supposed to be working on taking the, “End-to-End Machine Learning with TensorFlow on GCP,” course on Coursera. That is the first course in the Advanced Machine Learning with TensorFlow on Google Cloud Platform specialization they just started offering. I’m not sure exactly what is stopping me from finishing my first course tonight. It could just be the dragging march toward a bedtime that will be here before I know it or it could be something else.

  • Writing 500 words on the same topic for 30 days

    This sentence was written after all of the rest today. For some reason it seemed like a good idea to revisit the beginning at the end of my writing session. That is in part related to some editing and review.

    Nels at the end of the day

    Something seems to be lurking around in the edges of my consideration. Maybe it is driving me toward accepting a new challenge to write 500 words on the same topics for 30 days. That is a real and interesting thought exercise. Seriously it is a very challenging thing to take on. Saying something original on the same topic 30 times does not seem trivial. Stacking up that many new and original thoughts along the way to providing a useful trajectory could be interesting. It could be something that might help me push just beyond the edge of what is possible. Maybe that possibility is enough to make taking on the challenge something that should be done. Given that this new challenge might help along the journey to writing 1,000,000 words in the same year. Maybe it is a building block that will help build a big writing year. That might very well be the case. October could be the month where that exercise kicks off and gets going.

    Taking 15 minutes at the end of the day to engage in the creation of prose can take things a variety of different directions. We spend a ton of time and energy thinking about both the past and the future. A lot less of our time and energy is spent on understanding the nature of the moment that is occuring right now. Everything that is happening right now is obviously between the future and the past. It is something else. It is the moment where taking action is possible. It is a moment that is separate from any thoughts about how to take action, the merits of taking action, or even debates about what other actions might possibility do. An entire book could be spent tearing down and building up being present in the moment. So much of that defines where things are going and what perfect possible futures exist.

    Maybe this week will be the week that helps center things and move things forward. Bringing all of my thoughts together and building something seems so possible. At the same time, that door opening to possibility remains elusive. I have to do a bunch of training sessions this weekend that required a bunch of reading and watching videos. During the course of working on that training it seemed like a good idea to format all of my USB drives. It was pretty easy to use the Webroot utility that permanently deletes content. That exercise was completed before a quick format to remove any title on the drives. It has been some time since I needed to use a USB drive. Devices like that used to be an important part of managing a computer and files. Now the cloud has defeated the need for most of my USB drives. In some ways they are just not as useful as they used to be a decade ago.

  • I got some Pedalboard Mounting Tape

    Writing every day is about taking the time to write. Today my choice of words are going to be related to something I worked on today. This week a package arrived with some Power-Grip Pedalboard Mounting Tape. It seems to be better than velcro, but sort of does the same thing. My new Boss BCB-60 pedal board has been great. Pedals have been put in place. They have power that does not come from 9-volt batteries. It is very easy to pack them up now and put them away when necessary. Getting all the pedals setup was pretty easy. It took me a bit to try different orders and combinations. I found one that works. That pretty much set up the possibility of using the mounting take to position all the pedals in a more permanent way.

    My guitar pedal board
    My guitar pedal board

    Getting things set up was fun. Each pedal needed to be checked to ensure the battery leads were not touching metal. I watched a video on YouTube the other day where somebody wrapped the leads in electrical tape to prevent shorting or noise in the pedal chain. That was pretty easy to do with each of my pedals. Every cable connection was checked and every power cable connection was examined. Pretty much the entire pedalboard chain from guitar to amplifier was checked out for any potential issues. All of this effort did reduce the howl in the chain, but it did not completely get rid of it. My current guitar amplifier does not have an effects loop. That means the pedal chain between the guitar and amp needs to be clean enough to be playable. Sometimes a bad configuration or a bad pedal will create such a howl that it is off putting. Thankfully that was not the case this time around. Things worked and that is great news.

  • A day off from adulting

    Entering the time of was easy enough. Taking it was the hard part. Over the years it just gets harder. You can pretty much accept that as a part of life, the universe, and work. Most of the time adulting gets in the way of the things that captivated us, that inspired us, that dared us to imagine a world beyond what we could see or feel. That really was the essence of the possible. It was the glimpse beyond the edge of what was possible. Something about that just stuck with me. Years ago the need to strive beyond the edge of what was possible went from concept to reality. It was a palpable feeling that drove a certain type of single minded purpose that was not entirely healthy. Maybe it was just as unhealthy as struggling to adhere to taking a day off from adulting. That is where this story starts. It starts at the edge of what is possible. It starts with taking a day off from adulting.

    Ok. Maybe those two shots of espresso did not hurt things. A little jolt of caffeine was just enough to get things going and in this case the going had to get moving in the next thirty minutes or this window was going to close. That is how things work these days. Windows of time open and you have to figure out how to cultivate any seed of creativity that you might have. Sure that might sound simplistic, but waiting for some type of inspiration to strike and hoping you have a window of time open seems like a recipe for intellectual disaster. All of that adulting pretty much builds up into a wall of responsibility that prevents on demand creative sessions.

    Anyway today was going to be about taking a day off from adulting. It was going to be about setting aside that wall of responsibility and just digging into something meaningful and lasting. Sure those are some high expectations for a single creative sessions, but if you don’t aim for making a dent in the universe why bother preparing your lance to ride at full tilt anyway. Striking fear in the heart of a row of windmills might seem just as impossible as making a dent in the universe, but daring to dream big just makes the journey more interesting.

  • Writing a bit on my Pixel 2 XL

    Tonight was one of those nights. Things were happening and the day had come and gone. All things build to this time of the night. It takes a bit to get everybody ready for bed. Routines exist and those are part of the pattern. Our now 1 year old puppy Captain Pickles does not really prepare for the end of the day. That dog just runs amuck until it is time to take a nap. You can imagine that is pretty much like it sounds. A lot of running and puppy style behaviors followed by hours of very still sleep. My cup of coffee is still somewhat warm. I’m not going to microwave it tonight. Finishing it before it gets cold enough to require that is a major part of my motivation to keep going. This post is being written in the WordPress Android application. I’m not entirely sure if this interface is checking my spelling. Things could have gone horribly wrong.

    I’ll probably drop this post into a Google Doc later and see what happens. Writing with this Logitech K780 is getting easier each time. The keyboard itself is heavy enough and the keys are pretty well spread out. It is probably big enough to make it difficult to use as a traveling keyboard, but it works great at the house.

  • Those 15 minutes of effort

    Today just might be the day that things get back on track. Those 15 minutes of effort are what it takes to center my thoughts. At the end of the day or sometimes at the beginning sitting down and writing for 15 minutes is the key to unlocking a solid path forward. Striving forward on some type of useful path is really the essence of an unfolding perfect possible future. Writing for a few minutes and getting centered is important. You really do have to figure out the path forward and begin taking that first step along the path.

    Next week has to be marked with decision. It has to be full of decision points that push things forward. Maybe that is just enough to help move beyond cleaning up my office and thinking about writing. One of my recent plans was to try to use just my Pixel 2 XL smartphone to write for a week. It seems that the format that did spart a few words tonight was my ASUS Chromebook C101P. Next month Google is going to release some new hardware. Maybe a new tablet or a Pixelbook will entice me to replace this device. Chasing the bleeding edge of technology is not the best use of my time and resources, but for some reason it always seems to be the thing that I end up focusing on time and time again.