Author: smartpeopleiknow

How to get more from your smart speakers


I am a fan of smart speakers, despite the privacy concerns around them. If you are ok with that and you have one or are planning to get one, read these two links to see how you can get more out of them:

  1. How to control Sonos with Google Assistant
  2. Alexa Skills That Are Actually Fun and Useful | WIRED

I use Google Assistant on my Sonos and they make a great device even better. And while I do have Google Home devices in other parts of the house, I tend to be around the Sonos most, so having it there to do more than just play music is a nice thing indeed.

On the limits of Elon Musk


In this piece, Elon Musk Shares Painfully Obvious Idea About the Difficulty of Self-Driving Cars, we have a good summary of the limits of Elon Musk. Not that we need reminding, since we can never seem to escape the publicity of the man. However now he is seen more as a  a huckster and a clown and less of the visionary he once seemed to be. He’s gone from being like Edison to being like P.T. Barnum. It’s too bad, really. We need more visionaries: we have too many hucksters and clowns.

Here’s hoping he stops being foolish and starts being serious again.

(Image from the piece above.)

 

 

On what not to do when you are moving apartments


I thought this was great: The Decorating Lessons I’ve Learned From Moving 12 Times in 12 Years

I’ve made many of these mistakes the last time I moved (e.g. waiting too long to decorate). I’ll review this list the next time I am getting ready to move.

If you are planning to move, you owe it to yourself to read that piece.

Good luck with your move!

(Photo by Michal Balog on Unsplash)

It’s Monday. You have a stressful week ahead. Here’s how to better deal with it

Stress in life is unavoidable (despite how much you are trying to avoid it). The question is: what is the best way of dealing with it when it occurs? If you do not have any strategies to deal with it (other than run away), then read this: How to Turn Off Harmful Stress Like a Switch.

Sometimes just knowing you have one or more tools available to you can automatically reduce your stress. Read that and load up your stress toolbox.

P.S. If you need more tools, see this piece in the New York Times.

How we work is not good for us

Likely in a few hundred years people will look back at us and wonder how we could be so screwed up when it comes to work. If you are reading this while you have the Sunday Scarries, you likely won’t need much convincing.

If you do need convincing, then read these two pieces:

There are benefits that we as individuals get out of work. But we need to seriously question and challenge how good those benefits are in comparison to the drawbacks.

Many of us are becoming less religious in the 21st century. We recognize some of the benefits, but the drawbacks of it are too great to keep us religious. If you were to go back in time 500 years ago, most people would have thought this inconceivable, that we would give up on religion. Well, what those people think of religion then we think of work now.

If you do have the Sunday Scarries, I don’t envy you. But at least you know the problem is not you, it’s work.

(Photo by Alex Kotliarskyi on Unsplash)

Getting out of your comfort zone gives you a new and better comfort zone

During the pandemic I have found myself retreating into my comfort zone. It makes sense to some degree: life is hard enough with the lockdowns and worse that this stupid disease has brought us: why make things harder?

What I have realized now though is my comfort zone has shrunk as I retreated to it more and more. This has led to a bad downward spiral. Take exercise, for example. A 30 minute run used to be in my comfort zone while a 60 minute run was not. But as I exercised less during the pandemic, now even a 5 minute run is barely in my comfort zone anymore.

This made me realize that to have a larger comfort zone, you need to regularly go outside your old comfort zone and get uncomfortable. Staying in your comfort zone only shrinks it. But by going outside it more, you expand it. Having a larger comfort zone means you feel more comfortable and in control more often.

I’m going to start pushing on the boundaries of my comfort zone not because it is fun, but because I want a bigger one. I believe life is better when you do that.

One provision I would add is to make sure that when you go outside your boundaries it is in the direction of growth, not harm. Some people avoid going outside their comfort zone because they are afraid of getting hurt. Other people go too hard (eg runners) and end up returning to their old comfort zone and get stuck. Don’t do those things. Be gradual and be consistent as you stretch yourself: that’s the best way to expand your comfort zone.

Making your organization more inclusive


I’ve always been a fan of Chatelaine magazine for its content. Now I am also a fan of them for working to build a more inclusive Chatelaine. That link shows the many ways they aim for and measure their inclusiveness. Any organization wanting to be more  inclusive should look to them for ideas and approaches.

The link also shows the limits or obstacles any one organization has in becoming more inclusive. A smaller organization can only scale out so far, and there is always more to include than is sometimes possible. But by aiming high, they have achieved much. I’m hopeful that they will try and do more, and other organizations following their example can do more too. Inclusivity spread over more organizations leads to greater inclusion for all.  That’s a great thing.

(Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash)

Upgrade your thinking about economics


If you want to upgrade your thinking on economics, I recommend these four pieces:

  • The Choice Isn’t Between Capitalism or Socialism – this seems obvious to me and likely you too, but it is a good reference to keep around for whenever you hear people talking about capitalism and socialism.
  • America Never Learns the Limits of Bootstrapping – a good piece on the limits of social safety nets built using private initiatives. My belief is that social safety nets should come both from governments and individuals, and that we should be looking into how our society is set up to provide a wide range benefits for everyone. For example, unemployment insurance is good, but free or low cost education to allow people to improve themselves and others is important also. We need more initiatives to improve people’s lives.
  • A Basic Income Could Solve 8 of Society’s Biggest Problems – the big initiative in the 21st century should be this. We can eliminate poverty and remove many social ills with it. It will not be a cure all, but it can cure a-lot.
  • If You’re so Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich? Turns out It’s Just Chance – finally, some many say if you have all these social programs, no one will every try again because we need a system in place that encourages people to work hard and get rich. If you think that, read the article.

Not everyone will benefit from these pieces. I did, though, and for some of you reading this, you will as well.

(Photo by Aziz Jus on Unsplash)

The best book to learn calculus from

This may be the best book to learn calculus from: Calculus Made Easy.

I like it for two reasons. One, it’s free. Two, it does not take itself seriously nor does it take calculus seriously. To see what I mean, here’s a clip from the beginning of the e-book:

Considering how many fools can calculate, it is surprising that it should be thought either a difficult or a tedious task for any other fool to learn how to master the same tricks. Some calculus-tricks are quite easy. Some are enormously difficult.

The fools who write the textbooks of advanced mathematics—and they are mostly clever fools—seldom take the trouble to show you how easy
the easy calculations are. On the contrary, they seem to desire to impress you with their tremendous cleverness by going about it in the most difficult way.

Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will follow. What one fool can do, another can.

So if you want to learn calculus but are struggling, give that book a look. Sure it’s an old book, but calculus is an old subject. It may suit you just fine.

(Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash)

What solitary confinement teaches us


Solitary confinement is terrible. Most people confined this way for a stretch are badly affected by it. A few manage to come out of it better. It’s their stories that are told in this piece: How to Survive Solitary Confinement

The people that managed ok tend to have grit and the ability to make their minds work in a way to defeat being alone and confined. To see what I mean, read the piece. It can help you in some way if you are feeling alone and confined, as we all do from time to time.

(Photo by Marco Chilese on Unsplash)

It’s Monday. You need to start getting back in shape. Here’s a good start

If you think, I got to start exercising again, I just got to, but you can’t even begin to know to start, consider this: Easy Cardio Challenge

If you think: that’s too easy, then consider doing them faster. Or add on an additional fitness challenge from Darebee.

And if you aren’t sure how to do these exercises, here is how you a side jack:

Here’s how you do a step jack:

You’re all set. Print off the challenge and put an X through each day you do. In 30 days you will be in better shape than you are now. Just as important, you will have created an exercise routine for yourself. Kudos to you!

Desks of the near future

I’m not sure what the desk or workstation of the near future might look like, but these two articles are providing some ideas:

  1. This home office desk comes with hidden storage systems to keep your desk setup organized! | Yanko Design
  2. This retractable office solution provides privacy and isolation for remote work and WFH days! | Yanko Design

With the pandemic still ongoing, the thought of going back in the office seems remote, but when we do, I expect things are going to start to look different. They might even look like these designs.

Treadmills are horrible and have been forever

A horrific accident with a treadmill happened this week, causing lots of understandable worry. To see what I mean, see this: Peloton recalls treadmills after a child dies | CTV News

If you were wondering if treadmills were ever good, read this: The Torturous History of the Treadmill | Wirecutter

They have their uses, sure. But as equipment goes, they are one of my least favorite.

(Photo by Ryan De Hamer on Unsplash)

DBT is one way to deal with strong emotions

As this piece argues, if you need help or struggle with your emotions, approaches from dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) may be helpful. Consider the article as a bit of emotional first aid.

First aid may not be sufficient for everyone and you may need to see a therapist. But try the piece first and see if it is for you.

P.S. Another good piece on managing your moods is here.

The fascinating history of art in the Oval Office of the White House

The New York Times does a great job of telling the story of The Art in the Oval Office. There’s a good story of how it has evolved from Kennedy to Biden, and the Times does a good job of telling it by using various interactive tools. Well worth viewing.

Personally I like how different Kennedy was than the other presidents. But judge for yourself.

On Bill Gates


This piece in The New York Times on Bill and Melinda Gates Divorcing   got me thinking about Bill again. I’ve written about him several times on this blog. I often think of him because for most of my career my field (IT) has been shaped by him. Then he left Microsoft and went off to save the world. In doing so, he transformed from the Bill Gates of old to a newer and gentler Bill Gates. The change has been so remarkable that many people likely don’t know that young Bill Gates and what he was like. If you want a better understanding of that, this old TIME article from 1997 by Walter Isaacson s helpful. (Isaacson was Steve Jobs’ biographer among other things.)

I think old Bill Gates still has some of that personality in him. I am curious to see how the divorce will change him. Whether we will see Bill Gates v3.0, someone who is neither CEO nor philanthropist. Time will tell.

August 7, 2021: It looks like Bill and Melissa have officially divorced. As a result, I suspect we will be hearing less about Bill’s bad judgement when it comes to affairs or hanging out with Epstein. As I said before, I’ll be curious how all this changes him.

(Image is a link to Wikimedia.org)

It’s Monday. You have some difficult tasks in front of you this week. Here’s some help with that.

It’s always hard to deal with difficult tasks. If you are struggling, read this: Getting Good at Just Starting a Difficult Task – zen habits zen habits.

I especially liked the idea of making it meaningful and joyful. Sometimes just thinking about how you will feel when it is done brings joy. Focus on that.

Also shrink it down. I sometimes make a difficult task more difficult by imagining all the follow on activities. That’s wrong. Stay focused, break down the task, make it easier to do the next thing.

Good luck!

(Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash )

What I find interesting: dealing with getting old

Here’s some links I found around the topic of getting older and retiring. Maybe you aren’t thinking too much about that yet, but you should. For example, here’s a piece about how to have a long, fulfilling career and perhaps never retire. But if you going to retire, here’s how to retire on a fixed chuck of money. To get a fixed amount of cash, you need a plan. This piece can help you get to a million bucks regardless if you are in your 30’s, 40’s, or 50’s.

Money is just one challenge to deal with as you get older. Another is a potentially deteriorating brain. Here’s a sobering essay on how this person is preparing for the dementia she believes she will get. One wait to fight such things is to keep your mind active. One way to do that is to engage in activities such as games. Chess, for example. You might think you are too old to learn chess but this person learned when they were 40 and so can you.

(Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash)

Why it takes longer than four hours to build a system for a large organization like a bank or a government

A lot of people have very strong opinions about the IT that has been rolled out for Ontario’s vaccine distribution system. I understand that: it has been very challenging for people to get a vaccine here in this province. People look at other provinces like Nova Scotia with their centralized system and ask why didn’t the province do that. They look at this site some very smart guys hacked together in four hours that allows you to text it and get back nearby vaccination sites and they say the government should be more like that. They attribute the government with being cheap, racist and other things, and say they didn’t build a good IT system because of that.

I have strong opinions about the vaccine IT that has been built out for the province too.  The difference is that my opinions are based on working on several large scale projects with the province. It’s also based on working on emerging IT for several decades. I’d like to share it in the hope it helps people gain some perspective as to what is involved.

Building IT systems for a large organization, private or public, is difficult. There are many stakeholders involved and many users involved and often many existing IT systems involved. You have to meet the needs of all of them, and you often have to go through many reviews with internal reviewers to demonstrate your new IT system meets their standards before you can start to build anything. Even then, with all of that, the IT system you are about to build could still fail. Big organizations are very sensitive to this and work diligently to prevent it. You can’t just hack together a proof of concept one day and then the next day have it go live on some banking or government site. Not in my experience.

Failure is a big concern. Another big concern is the needs of the stakeholders. For government systems there are many of them. There were over 50 other organizations that I had to work with external to the government on the projects I was leading. Each had their own IT systems and their own way of doing things. We could not just come in and say throw out your existing IT and use this new thing. There was a whole onboarding process that had to be developed to bring them into the new way of doing things. And that didn’t include all the people in the province or the country who will use the IT system and are therefore are also big stakeholders: they were taken into account and consulted separately.

A third big concern is systems integration. Not only do you need to work with the external IT systems of the stakeholders mentioned above, you have to work with internal IT systems to get data or send them data. In all cases that means not only do you need to understand what the government needs the new IT  system to do, but it means you have to have some understanding of how all these other systems work. Your new IT system can not be effective if you don’t know how to work with the existing systems. It’s a lot harder than scraping existing web sites and calling it done.

It is one thing to develop an IT system to provide new functionality; you also have to make sure it satisfies a number of non-functional requirements (NFRs). Reliability, performance, security, maintainability, data integrity, accuracy are just some of the NFRs that must be determined and met. Even cost and speed to market (i.e., the time it takes to develop a working system) are important requirements. Then there are regulatory requirements you need to meet, from SOC 2 to HIPAA, depending on the type of system you are building.

In addition to all that, there may be technical or design constraints that you must meet. The organization you are working with may require that you use certain suppliers or certain technology for anything you build. You may want to use Mongo and Node in a GCP region in the US for your IT system, but your client might say it has to run on Azure in Canada using Java/Springboot and Postgres, so your new IT system will have to accommodate that.

Once you have taken all that into account, the organization may have some other requirements, including dates, that must be met. In the case of systems like the vaccine IT, that date is “yesterday”. That will force some decisions on how you build your system.

All that said, my educated guess – and it is a guess, because it is based on my experience and not inside knowledge on how the system was built – was that Ontario decided the quickest way to roll out the vaccine IT was to build on the basis of what already exists. For example, many of the individual pharmacies in Ontario have their own systems for working with their patients. And several hospitals I checked use other software like Verto to manage their patients. The integration of all those systems is on “the glass”. By that I mean you can go to the government web site (“the glass”) and then you are redirected to other systems (e.g. a Verto system for a hospital) to book an appointment.

There are benefits to going with this approach versus building a new centralized IT system. It’s cheaper, for one. But it’s also faster to rollout than a new system. It’s less prone to failure than a new system. If you assume people are going to sign up for COVID vaccines like they do flu vaccines, then you know this approach will work, and reliability is a key NFR. If you are designing IT systems, you have to make assumptions to proceed, and that one is based on things you know, which is usually good.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bad assumption. Unlike the flu, where uptake is around 30% and spread out, people are scrambling to get the COVID vaccine. This has led to the downfall of the current approach in Ontario as people try all sorts of ways to get a shot asap.

You might say: well that was a dumb assumption, why would anyone make it? In my experience, with new IT systems, it is hard to predict how people will behave. My colleagues once built a system for a government agency that allowed people to weekly update their status on their workplace. The system was available 24/7, but they had to put in their information by Sunday night, 23:59. All week no one would use the system, and then at 11 pm on Sunday it would get hammered with users trying to send in their information. We did not predict that. We assumed there would be peak usage then, but almost all the traffic was at that point.

To mitigate the risk of bad assumptions, IT projects will often do a gradual rollout. However that was never going to be an option here: people wanted the vaccine IT system “yesterday”.

Nova Scotia chose to develop a centralized system and people are saying Ontario should have done that. Possibly. It’s also possible that conditions in Ontario could have resulted in delays in rolling out a centralized system. Or the system could have been on time but failed often. Many IT systems and programs (e.g. Obamacare) have this result. Or some of the big hospitals and independent small pharmacies could have opted out. Then people would have been complaining about not being able to get a vaccine at all and that would have been much worse.

I am happy for Nova Scotia that theirs works well (although people are bypassing it and just showing up in Nova Scotia, so it’s not all roses there either). It’s fair to compare Ontario to them to some degree. And when all this is over, there should be an audit done by objective third parties to see what worked and what didn’t and what Ontario should do next.

I hope after reading this you have a better understanding of what goes into building IT systems for large organizations. I wish they could be built in a day or a week or a two week sprint even. I do know that large organizations are becoming more nimble and are working to getting out IT capability to their clients and citizens faster than ever before. But as you see, there are many things to take into account, and even with many people working on a new IT system, it does take time. Time measured in weeks and months and even years, not hours.

So the next time you hear someone say “they had all this time to figure this out”, take this into account. And thank you for reading this. I hope it helps.

Finally, these thoughts expressed here are mine and not those of my employer.

(Image is a link to the wikipedia page on system context diagrams, a diagram often used to determine how a new IT system fits in with existing IT systems).

Innovative furniture designs for small homes

I love small spaces, but a lot of mainstream furniture are not suited for it. That’s why I was glad to see this piece: Tiny home-friendly foldable furniture designs that are the modern space-saving solution we need! | Yanko Design

There’s some brilliantly designed furniture for small spaces, including the desk above. Click on over to Yanko Design and take a look.

April 2021 pandemic highlights and ramblings (a newsletter, in blog form)

The pandemic is still going on and so is this! Here’s my latest not-a-newsletter of highlights and ramblings and thingamabobs for this April.

Pandemic:The pandemic is a story of extremes this month. Some countries, like the US and the UK and Israel, are seemingly coming to the end of it. Meanwhile countries like India are burning up with cases and death. It’s terrible to see. For countries like the US and UK, being able to produce their own vaccines made a big difference. But it wasn’t the only difference (Ahem, going from Trump to Biden). For a deeper dive on just one country, here’s a good piece on how Israel was so successful

In Canada we model the world in some ways. For parts of Canada life is relatively normal and aims to stay that way. (I’m look at you up North and out East.) Then there is Ontario, where I am, which seems to have suffered a collapse in provincial leadership. The provincial government recently issued edicts to the province, only to have everyone from the police to the public health units to the people either ignore it or rally against it. Some newspapers are saying that’s the end for the premier.

I have some sympathy for the government’s plight. On one hand you have  hospitals halting non-emergency surgeries as COVID-19 patients fill ICUs, which is terrifying. On the other hand, you have businesses everywhere saying that they’re at risk of losing everything and need help. What you need is strong leadership at this point, but as the Globe and many other argued, we aren’t getting it. We have a panicked leadership seemingly refusing to do anything other than hope for the vaccines to rescue them for their inability to do more.

I’m too discouraged to say more. I’ll let the Toronto Star have the last word:  A 278-word timeline of Ontario’s COVID-19 response | The Star

Individually, the New York Times says we have all hit the wall and we are languishing. I agree. Some of us are getting vaccines, but the unequal distribution can make us feel guilty. Lots of difficult feeling to deal with. We just have to take breaks when we can and forge on.

Meanwhile for something completely different, pandemic-wise, check out this: Honeywell and rapper Will.i.am just debuted a futuristic face-mask with built-in wireless earphones at Yanko Design.

 Newsletters:last month I said newsletters are “still a thing”. What an understatement. If anything, they are now a Big Thing. So big that the New York Times is getting ready to go toe to toe with Substack.

It makes sense. There are likely some writers at the Times looking at Matt Yglesias and others generating close to a million in annual revenue and thinking: I want some of that. Money changes everything, and the amount of money newsletters are generating tells me that we are going to be talking about them for some time.

US : I am glad of two things in the United States. One, we no longer have to hear about the last president any more. (Although some writers still can’t give him up: he’s like an addiction they can’t quit). Two, they have a president who seems to be in a hurry. Awhile ago Vox argued Joe Biden should do everything at once. It looks like he has decided to do that. Besides Vox, two good pieces on Biden that helped me understand him better were this, Bidenomics, explained – Noahpinion,  and this, the radicalism of Joe Biden.

Other interesting things: I am looking to purge my basement and other rooms of things, so I found this piece on how to let go of any possession good. Post-pandemic, we are all likely going to want to live with less.

IKEA came out with this fascinating cookbook: IKEA ScrapsBook – Zero-Waste Recipes & Ideas – IKEA CA. Worth a look.

In the next few decades, I predict many brutalist buildings will be destroyed. Once I may have cheered this, but I have come around to appreciating them more. Articles like this helped.

Poor Orlando Bloom. He gave an interview on what his day in Los Angeles looked like and was widely mocked and ridiculed for it. I had to laugh as well. Then I came across this piece: California dreamin’ with Orlando Bloom, and other tales of only-in-L.A. obliviousness. It helps explain Mr. Bloom and L.A. in general. Worth reading!

Libertarians have been taking a beating during this pandemic. Understandably. Still, they make a good case for why libertarian principles are still useful during this time here.

Finally: I came across this site which I love: All the Restaurants in New York. It reminded me of the work of the late great Jason Polan, and his attempt to draw every person in New York. This gives me a chance to share some links I have of the beloved artist, including this piece in the New Yorker about his Taco Bell Drawing Club. The New York Times also has a piece on it. Finally here are two other sites showing their appreciation for him: ghostly.com and 20×200.com

 

May we all get through this pandemic soon and gather in large crowds again and be with everyone in New York and every place else as well. RIP, Jason. (Image via the NYT’s piece).

Revisiting my views on the Renaissance and the Middle Ages

Growing up, I learned about the glorious Renaissance and the Dark Ages that preceded them. If you learned something similar, here are two articles to set you straight. The first one argues that the Middle Ages (not the Dark Ages, thank you very much!) were pretty interesting, actually. After you read it, I think you will agree. The second one argues not only were the Middle Ages good, but the Renaissance was not all that great. I had to agree after reading it.

I will still have a fondness and a preference for the Renaissance, but I found these two pieces were good correctives for my bias against the Middle Ages.

(Image from the first piece in currentaffairs.org)

In praise of katas and other forms of motion


Reading this great piece by John DeMont on how he finds calm while doing katas made me think that I often forget that motion is a good way to deal with a too active mind. Sure, mindfulness and meditation are great, but there are days when my brain resists that. Moving, whether it is katas or tai chi or simply  walking, all help the mind in finding a place to center and calm down. I believe involved movement such as katas help with that even more.

If you have a discipline such as martial arts, then you can tap into that. You can also do workouts, even workouts that approach tai chi, such as this. Or just go for an engaging walk where you push yourself not only to walk a bit faster but to really observe and take in the world as you go.

You’ll be glad you did.

(Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash)

On taking time off on your birthday

Since I started work, decades ago, I have always taken the day off from work for my birthday. There are two good reasons for this:

  1. You get to celebrate and do things special things. I would often go to the Senator in downtown Toronto and have the fantastic breakfast they serve. Then I would roam around downtown and shop for things I love. I’d meet friends for lunch. Perhaps go to an afternoon movie or just go home and have a nap before the evening festivities. Whatever makes a great day, having the day off means you get to indulge in it.
  2. You get to avoid difficult things. Work is often difficult, and difficult things can spoil your birthday. If you have a great job then this isn’t such a problem. But if you have a demanding job, it’s hard to enjoy your birthday with all that. Best to take the day off!

The next time your birthday rolls around, I recommend you do the same. Tell people in advance, book off the time, and plan your own idea of a great day. You’ll be glad you did. It’s like a gift you give yourself.

This year I am celebrating a milestone birthday and am taking off the entire week! How old am I? The dog photo contains a hint. 🙂

Happy birthday for whenever your day is!

(Top photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash. Dog Photo by Glenn Han also on Unsplash)

It’s Monday. Here’s some links on moving from being resilient to being successful


Here’s two pieces on being resilient. The first one argues that to be more resilient, it pays to journal. That’s certainly a good thing to do. To move from being resilient to being successful, consider taking an active role in shaping your story, as this piece argues. If you are unsure of how to do that, consider examining role models who have struggled with similar difficulty and succeeded. Look at what they did and how they thought and felt during their struggle. Take all of that which applies to you and use to change your story.

(Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash)

What I find interesting: physics


Last week I talked about not learning music being a regret of mine. The other regret I have is not learning physics. I dabble in it, but it’s a struggle.

If you are interested in learning physics, read this piece from my friend Susan. I got to know her because of it: So You Want to Learn Physics… — Susan Fowler. She now has a new version of it at a new site! You can find it here.

Other friends I have who do know physics tell me the thing to learn is Lagrangian mechanics. Here’s a good guide to it: Lagrangian Mechanics For Dummies: An Intuitive Introduction – Profound Physics

Another way to learn physics is via Youtube. This guy has an amazing YouTube channel on Physics: DrPhysicsA – YouTube Worthwhile.

Of course you can also read text books on it. I think Dover Books are among the best for this. For example, this: Classical Mechanics: 2nd Edition: Corben, H.C., Stehle, Philip: 9780486680637: Gateway – Amazon.ca

Still another way is via experimentation. For example:  build your own particle detector | symmetry magazine

(Speaking of experimentation, here’s a great piece on how the LIGO Observatory detects gravitational waves)

A problem I have always had with physics is how did physics get to where it got to, and why are certain areas more prominent than others. To better understand that, it’s good to look backwards at how physics was done in previous time. For example, this article on Ole Roemer: Ole Roemer Profile: First to Measure the Speed of Light | AMNH. We all know light has a specific speed but back then some thought light was instantaneous. But Roemer came up with a method to show light had an actual speed and it could be measured. Likewise, here is the great physicist James Maxwell with a book on how scientists developed their idea of what heat is and how it works: Theory of Heat – James Clerk Maxwell – Google Books.

Finally, a good way to learn physics is read good articles on it. Here’s a collection of some:

(Photo by Roman Mager on Unsplash)

Yes, you can run broadband over wet string (which is how my home internet feels lately)


Remember tying two tin cans together with string to communicate? Well according to this article at BBC News…

Engineers at a small British internet service provider have successfully made a broadband connection work over 2m (6ft 7in) of wet string.

The connection reached speeds of 3.5 Mbps (megabits per second), according to the Andrews and Arnold engineer who conducted the experiment.

The point of the experiment appears to have been purely to see if it was achievable.

Cool! See the article for details.

For the meantime, I think I’ll stick with copper and fiber.

(For more on tin can phones, check out: Tin can telephone – Wikipedia)

John Stuart Mill on why you should not argue with people on the Internet (and especially twitter)

I have long tried to not get into arguments with people on the Internet*. This has served me well. If you are struggling with that, I recommend this piece:
150 Years Ago, a Philosopher Showed Why It’s Pointless to Start Arguments on the Internet

Mill makes the case for why trying to argue with people won’t get anywhere.

Read it. Practice it. Enjoy a better Internet.

(*Especially Twitter. Even debating with reasonable people is awful on Twitter due to the format of the medium.)

 

It’s Monday. A good time to remember there is something better than willpower to succeed


It’s Monday. You might be thinking: I could be more successful if only I had more willpower. I am here to challenge that with this article: Willpower Isn’t the Key to Success.

In a nutshell, set yourself up so that the thing you need least of all is willpower. It’s easier said than done, I know. But it is true: the easier it is to start something, the less effort is required, the easier it is to succeed. Easier, but not necessarily easy.

Focus on setting yourself up for success. Once you start making progress, you may find your willpower is increasing along with everything else.

What I am interested in: music (lots of great links)

One of my regrets in life is I never learned how to play music. So I kept a bunch of links for me and anyone who wants to try:

If you don’t want to learn how to make music, here are some other interesting music links:

(Photo by Simon Noh on Unsplash)

It’s the weekend. Time to clean house. And you hate cleaning house. So read this.

Some people love cleaning their house. I envy them. I hate it, and only the thought of a dirty and mess place gets me through it.

If you are like me, I highly recommend this: The Lazy Person’s Guide to a Happy Home: Tips for People Who (Really) Hate Cleaning | Apartment Therapy

You will find some tips to make the process less painful. Will you enjoy it? Please. Let’s not get carried away. But you will not mind it so much.

(Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash )

 

Were Marcel Duchamp’s Monte Carlo Bonds the precursor to NFTs?

If you are a fan or even passingly aware of Marcel Duchamp , you likely have heard of works of his: Nude Descending a Staircase to Fountain to Large Glass. They are all well known With the arrival of NFTs on the art scene, I was reminded of another of his works not so well known: Monte Carlo Bonds. As Wikipedia explains:

The Monte Carlo Bonds were a 1924 Marcel Duchamp work in the form of legal documents, created as bonds, originally intended to be produced in editions of 30. The creation of the work came out of Duchamp’s repeated experiments at the Monte Carlo Casino, where he endlessly threw the dice in order to accumulate profit through an excruciatingly gradual process.

The use of an artificial and random process is not unlike using blockchain for NFTs. And while both methods are associated with art, the primary purpose seems to be to generate profit. Duchamp was well ahead of his time.

Christie’s has more on these bonds.

To lose weight is simple: eat 2000 calories daily and walk 10000 steps


It seems ridiculous to say that, but it really is simple (but not easy): eat 2000 calories daily and walk 10000 steps. To see what I mean, read these two articles:

  1. ‘The Good News About What’s Bad for You’ Junk Food Diet – Bon Appétit | Bon Appetit
  2. How Fit Can You Get From Just Walking? | GQ

In both of them, the people who lost weight ate about 2000 calories a day. I mean the guy in the first one literally lived on junk food and still lost 11 pounds in a month.In the second one, the people participating walked 10000 steps as well as ate around 2000 calories. The combination will get you fit and keep you in a calorie deficit mode that will cause your body to lose weight.

For more examples of that, see this (Fixing His Diet Helped This Guy Lose 100 Pounds and Get Shredded at 50) and this (Walking For Weight Loss – How to Lose Weight by Walking) and this (Apple Watch, New Year’s resolutions, and losing 50 pounds – 9to5Mac).

Is it easy? For most people, no. Do you have to be disciplined? Yes. Is there ways to go about it that are smarter than others? Certainly.

If you need motivation, read this: You’re ‘Prediabetic’? Join the Club – The New York Times. Why? You might think: I am fine with being overweight. And that’s ok: not everyone looks like a model. But you don’t want to be diabetic if you can help it.

P.S. 2000 calories is a guide. If you are a much smaller person, you might need a smaller number of calories. If you aren’t sure, consult your doctor.

(Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash )