Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

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

Month: July 2019

  • The promise of getting things done

    Yesterday seemed to be a day full of promise, but ended up being a day where that promise was left on the horizon. I’m still keeping my phone in a Pelican G40 case. Even with those few extra minutes of productivity I could not get everything done that needed to get done. That happens and it seems to be happening more and more. Working real time and getting things done is one way to make sure nothing stacks up on a list of pending items. Some of the items that need to get done take a lot more than one day of effort. Sure I could start to break down those papers that need to get written into sections and tasks that could be done in a day and begin to fight the good fight to get those tasks and sections done and over time all of it would end up resulting in periods of extreme productivity and output. Maybe just reading that was enough to help me change directions.

    I took the time to watch some of the debate from last night. That happened in my office and it seemed disjointed. I’m still stuck at why a real party platform is not being presented to help people understand a political trajectory. Overall, the debate format was better than the last round, but it still seemed to jump around a lot due to the number of people on the stage. It is really hard to have a focused conversation with 10 people on a stage. Maybe the fact that we are at peak podcast has changed the way a lot of people consume content. A podcast provides a format for really deep conversations. Yesterday, I really enjoyed listening to Mark Cuban and Nilay Patel have a deep conversation about technology and even net neutrality. That conversation had a degree of depth that helped provide context and ultimately expanded the conversation.

  • Moving the taskbar around

    Normally I keep the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Yesterday, I switched it up and put the taskbar at the top of the screen on all my devices. This change may or may not have had some type of innate benefit to my productivity and joy. Earlier today I was listening to Mark Cuban talk about how we arbitrage our time. It was one of those interesting debates where the intersection of how we buy away boredom and the value of our time were both discussed.

    A lot of daily routines involves working and then watching something (television or streaming) and then going to sleep. In those instances it seemed like the argument was being made that we buy away our boredom to feel like we used that time or at least we eased the passage of time. Within the same conversation the inherent value of time was discussed. It really made me think about the ultimate question that I ask myself every day when I wake up based on an axiom from the life and times of Steve Jobs.

    Every day I ask myself about how I’m going to go about making a dent in the universe or more to the point what I’m going to do with the time I have today to strive forward toward the edge of what is possible. That might seem like an outrageous objective for a daily mantra, but it really is the necessary first step in figuring out meaningful paths to fill the day. Deriving the nature and definition of a meaningful path might take the rest of the day and may very well be a good use of my time today, but that is probably not going to happen.

  • It seems a new Pixelbook is really coming

    The new Pixelbook 2 seems to be going through FCC review under the codename Atlas. It might even be a more affordable version of the device. I’m buying it either way. The build could be affordable or super premium. Either way works for me. My ASUS Chromebook is missing some keys and needs to be replaced. Writing on my Pixel 3 XL is challenging. Typing is different than working with an on-screen keyboard. It might be the rate of input or perhaps the thought required that makes the difference.

  • Forgotten platforms and political attention

    Yesterday, I watched part of the 7 hours of testimony from Robert Mueller in front of two different congressional committees. It made me wonder about the amount of attention that is being paid to politics in general at all levels of government. My thoughts wandered to ponder if more people were watching and enjoying ESPN than the hearinings. The attention of people rated in viewership is typically evaluated in terms of how passionate those viewers happen to be at the time. Fans of sporting teams that watch ESPN are typically reasonably passionate about something. That might be one specific team or maybe everything related to an entire city or maybe even a region. Politics are complex and getting even more complex every day. Trying to divide that complexity into two main voting categories that has no index for passion remains deflating.

    That is the point in this thought exercise that seems to stand out to me. Maybe it is an inflection point that snuck up slowly or maybe it is just suddenly ours and very real. The example under consideration is a comparison between what it takes to become a sports fan of typical team vs. what it takes to really become active in a political party. My guess is that throughout the United States more people are actively supporting sporting teams on a daily basis than a specific political party. That is a line of inquiry that is really driving me toward some research questions around local government engagement levels. Understanding civil society has been a passion of mine since before I started to reflect on the intersection of technology and modernity. For better or worse the social fabric that binds us together and informs how we relate is built on the foundation of civil society.

    One of the things that I have spent some time reading over the years are party platforms. Maybe the one that caught my attention the most was the 1960 party platform of JFK. It is pretty easy to figure out the trajectory of your local sports team. They are actively winning or losing and you can get a sense for how close they are to contending for a championship. Trying to figure out the trajectory of a political party and what exactly that party is trying to accomplish is really hard in a world full of very short soundbites that lack context or any real degree of directionality in terms of where the argument is going. Sitting down and reading an entire party platform is a real commitment. Figuring out where all 20 candidates that are running for president stand within the context of that platform would be a daunting task. My honest assessment would be that they all probably do not have defined positions or have throughout out exactly where they stand on the entire platform.

  • 30 solid minutes of creativity

    Get that egg timer ready to sit down and write for 30 solid minutes. Within that slice of joy the promise of 30 solid minutes of creativity exist. It starts with the tepid spark of a blank canvas and expands with each splashing of creativity. Maybe that was enough to make you want to imagine a world of possibility just on the other side of the possible or maybe a yawn will overcome the will to extinguish procrastion. Some people tend to believe procrastination is inherently the reward of relaxation, but that duality never really made sense to me in practice. The simple act of hammering keys on a keyboard or writing with a fountain pen to me is relaxing. Pracrasition that drives me from that act shuts the door to a certain degree of peace of mind knowing the things worth doing were done.

    Today a thought arrived related to writing a manuscript titled, “Power & Consequence.” It has been a few years since I sat down and wrote a purely philosophical weighty tome of thought. Maybe now is as good a time as any to carve out a bit of time and make that happen.

  • Working in LaTeX again

    Normally my writing happens in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. I have not tried to use any other work processing software in years. Seriously, I have not even looked at LaTeX editors in some time. However, in my infinite search for bound of joy yesterday it seemed like now is the time to take the plunge and reintroduce myself to the joys of writing and working in a LaTeX editor. This effort is directly related to my renewed interest in publishing content at a much faster rate. Maybe the best method to move forward it to compose survey builds based on answering relevant questions, collect data, analyze that data, and publish papers based on that activity. Perhaps that is the best method to begin to move forward at a rate of producing 3 to 6 articles per year. Honestly, to accomplish that goal I am working on a strategy to produce a paper every 30 days next year. That should allow enough false starts to really get to a genuine pace of 3 to 6 articles a year.

  • Working on a Qwiklabs quest

    It turned out that I had 100 expiring credits from Qwiklabs. At that point, I just started searching the catalog to find something to tackle this afternoon. It seemed like a good idea to take on one of the more advanced quests. Today I had the day off and the afternoon free. That combination is epic. The quest I took on was called. “Data Science on the Google Cloud Platform.” It was a 60 credit quest and it was labeled as advanced. The quest involves 10 steps. During the first hour of my quest here I have finished the first step and am working on knocking out step number two. 

    1. Introduction to SQL for BigQuery and Cloud SQL
    2. Ingesting Data Into The Cloud
  • Whoa that weekend went by quickly

    Yesterday, I had a cherry Pibb Xtra soda while watching the movie Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) in Dolby Cinema at an AMC theater. Over the last couple of years I have really enjoyed the Dolby Cinema format. The combination of screen clarity and sound immersion really makes a difference during the movie going experience. Between IMAX and Dolby Cinema my favorite at the moment is hands down Dolby Cinema. My central criticism of the design would be the strangely tall walls between the rows. I’m generally considered exactly average height and I find the height of the wall distracting. My guess is that a large swath of folks find the wall distracting. Oh yeah, I got a little distracted in that aside and missed the main point about having a Pibb Xtra.

    Generally, I go out of my way not to consume soda. We don’t really buy and keep it in the house. Movie theaters are really the one place where consuming a vat of cola is probably going to happen. Yesterday, it really was a vat of Pibb Xtra. That is a soda that I do not often come across, but for some reason it always catches my attention. Being able to kick it up a notch with some cherry flavoring made my selection inevitable. My rate of going to the movies has increased recently. Years ago, I used to go see pretty much every movie. Back in graduate school I went to Blockbuster and used a movie pass to rent a new movie every day. Oh yeah, Blockbuster was a video rental chain that allowed people to borrow physical media.

    Whoa — now is probably the right time for a public service announcement about your old physical media. Unless you were using archival grade CD, DVD, or Blu-ray physical disc media your content is slowly degrading (aka Disc rot). Seriously, I’m not kidding about the degradation. If that content was important to you, then you might want to consider checking on those old movies or pictures and storing them in a more modern way. All of my physical media was stored in those binders in a temperature controlled dark place. For the most part, all of the discs seemed to work just fine. My latest computer built used a Corsair Air 740 high airflow ATX cube case that does not actually have a disc drive or any external bay for physical media of any kind. This is my first build without a disc drive of some type (I’m including magnetic tape as a type of disc storage). The moral of this lengthy passage of prose is backup your data in multiple ways if it is important to you.

  • Wondering about the next Pixelbook release

    Today was one of those days where I started to ponder my next Chromebook. At Costco, I looked at a 14 inch HP Chromebook for a few minutes. All of my other Chromebooks have been built by ASUS and they have been aluminum body models. They have also been touchscreen devices. I’m hoping that the rumors about the Pixelbook 2 being a nice midrange device are true. At this point, I’m waiting for the release of the next Pixelbook version. The Pixelbook 2 is going to be my next Chromebook. It needs to show up here sooner than later. This ASUS Chromebook Flip C101P has several broken keys on the number row.

  • Deciding where to store a backup phone case

    Today I started wondering if my backup phone case should be kept in my travel bag. Yesterday a new phone case arrived. It is a silicone jacket for my Pixel 3 XL. You might be wondering what color the case happens to be. The answer to that question would be pineapple. That is the color designation of the new phone case that arrived. My curiosity is if it should just be stored in my travel bag. Chances are that if a phone case was destroyed it would be on a trip and therefore having my backup phone case with me would be prudent.