Tiny Experiments In recent years I’ve grown increasingly convinced that hyper-focus on being productive and goal oriented is a prescription for a great deal of stress, anxiety, and dissatisfaction in life. So, when I ran across this book with the subtitle of “How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World” I had to stop to read it. And I’m glad I did. The book aims to teach you 10 things (outlined on its webpage. What I took away from the book was to approach interests and ideas with a scientific perspective. That is, try something for a set amount of time or a set number of attempts (for example, “I will write 30 articles in 30 working days” ) rather than more nebulous goals (e.g. “I will write more”) or goals with no clear end date. Then, take a look at what you accomplished – or didn’t. That helps you to see more clearly whether you really are interested in pursuing that activity in the longer term. ...

Using AI in Education I’ve read quite a number of articles recently about the use of AI in education. Specifically, there’s be a good bit of discussion around whether students should use AI in completing assignments. Strangely, it seems there’s a fair number of folks that believe that it’s perfectly fine for students to do this. I disagree. School work, whether homework or in-class work has one goal: to help the student to ingest and process information in a way that aids them in recalling and using that information later in life or in other situations. In order for this goal to be acheived, it is imperative that they use that information, recalling it, applying it to different scenarios, looking for links to related information, and so on. Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel, in their book make it stick (ISBN:978-0-674-72901-8) points out that using information in ways that matter is the key to effective, long-term learning. Using AI to complete a task bypasses that process so that in the end the student learns nothing, despite earning an “A” in the class. ...

Why Would Anyone Choose to be Attacked? I don’t remember now, what prompted me to think about this topic. It’s one that I actually jotted down some time ago in response, probably, to a news article or some other reading I had done at the time. But the question that I wanted to explore a little bit (this may be more a micro blog post rather than long-form) is in the title. ...

Learning Emacs Part 1 Emacs, if you’re unfamiliar, is a text editor that has been around since the 1970s. It was originally designed for editing macros in early computer systems. The most popular version, and the one that dominates the space today is GNU Emacs which was developed by Richard Stallman somewhere around 1976. I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty details of its history but knowing that it has been around for nearly 50 years and remains a very popular editor, particularly among developers and others, like me, who are interested in exploring different technologies and appreciate the extensibility and utility of the program gives you a sense of why you might want to consider it. ...

Rural vs Urban Living For most of my life I’ve lived in more suburban areas. And, since this is what I’ve known and am comfortable with, this is often my “go-to” when looking for a home. In fact, my tendency has always been to lean rural. I once went looking for a home that I could “sit on my front porch buck naked and nobody would know or care.” I wanted that privacy. I wanted that distance from others. I am not a terribly social person so being out in the sticks where I don’t have to deal with neighbors has always had an appeal to me. ...

This page is aimed at addressing issues/learning about installing and troubleshooting OpenBSD on the Lenovo X250. These changes may work with other devices, but I cannot confirm that! Toggling the Touchpad to avoid Palm Rejection Issues

Toggling the Touchpad in OpenBSD on Lenovo X250 to Address Palm Rejection Issues. So, one of the challenges I encountered with OpenBSD is that the touchpad does a really bad job of rejecting motion from my palm. While writing in Emacs I’d often find my mouse jumping around and my writing not where I expected it to be. After some digging around I found a solution: How to setup OpenBSD in i3 to toggle touchpad Create a file in ~/home/bin/ called “toggle-touchpad.sh” ...

Learning in Public Probably a couple of years ago, while doing some researching on learning, I ran across numerous articles and blog posts that touted the notion of learning in public. In general, these were associated with Personal Knowledge Management software such as Notion, Roam, or Obsidian (and a whole bunch of others!). This topic piqued my interest then and I played with it a bit. More recently, the topic was brought back to my attention so I wanted to explore it a bit more. ...

Do You Have a Passion Project? I’m always fascinated when I hear or read about someone who devotes significant time and effort into what they call their passion project. I mean, how do they come up with those ideas? What makes something a passion project? Dictionary.com defines a passion as an intense desire or enthusiasm for something. So someone’s passion project is borne out of their intense enthusiasm for whatever that project is. But how do they find that? I mean, I have a lot of interests. I spend inordinate amounts of time on some of those interests (computers and related technology, for example) but I would not call those passion projects. Nor would I even say I have a passion for technology. There are many in the open-source community that are quite passionate about the philosophy of open-source. Some to the point of being extremist. I appreciate the open-source philosophy and try, whenever possible to support it. I use open-source software and generally look for open-source options when looking for software. But am I passionate about it? No, not really. Am I going to go out and proselytize for it? Nope. Nor am I going to look down on those who choose not to prioritize open-source software. ...

Senior Socializing If you’ve read any of the literature on aging engaging in social activities with others is one of the most commonly cited contributors to an overall sense of well-being, maintaining cognitive function, and even to longevity. As a rule, I’ve always been a bit of skeptic on that front believing that while this may be generally true, it really depends on the person. I am not a social person. I have always been a bit of an introvert. No small part of that is because, as I discussed in this essay I believe I may have some autistic tendencies that show up through social awkwardness. I’m never really comfortable in social situations because I really don’t know how to make small talk, a necessary skill in most social situations. My skepticism comes in the form of wondering if the stress and anxiety that comes from being uncomfortable in most social situations counteracts any benefit of those situations. ...