On Knives Out - Day 72

Every now and then, you get the pleasure of reliving some part of your past that you thought might be gone to you forever. I felt that way a couple of weeks ago when I got to attend a lecture during SF Sketchfest by, among other people, the man who helped write Clue (the Movie), and we watched it on the big screen at the Castro theater. I love Clue, and they really don’t make movies like it much anymore. Or, possibly, they never really did. When I was a kid, of course, I liked the TV shows such as Murder She Wrote, but I knew that to see the big screen equivalent was rare.

Tonight, my friend Leah talked me into seeing Knives Out and oh, Lord, am I glad she did. Spoiler alert: it’s good. But even better: it’s genuine. It’s a movie made by someone who both understands and is in love with the old whodunit, without being overly slavish. It’s not a movie for everyone. There are things about it that are silly, to be sure. But if you like Clue, you will love this movie. And I love Clue. So yeah.

All the standards are there: the mansion, the old man, the impossible crime, etc. But there are some things that stand out: first, and most importantly, the main character - who is not Daniel Craig, despite what the trailers would have you believe. Instead, it’s the caregiver, a young Cuban actress whose name I never did catch but I just looked it up (Ana de Carmas). Her role is tricky and had to be believable to pull the movie off, and she knocked it out of the park. Daniel Craig is, of course, great, as is Chris Evans. This is a character study, so of course the characters have to work and they do. Unlike Clue, this movie occasionally lets its characters out of the house, and those are some of the most interesting scenes; filled with tension, as if the movie keeps drawing everyone back to the murder. Nobody is allowed - quite literally - to be away from it for long, and it rides over the whole movie. If you’re like me, there’s a central tension to the film, a sort of epic fight between good and evil. I turned to Leah after it was over and said “My God, if that movie had a bad ending I was going to be so, so angry.”

Spoiler alert: it does not have a bad ending.

Go see it.

On Processing - Day 71

I’ve been looking around for a way to do some simple motion graphics. I had a vision of mind of a simple animation of the bike rides that the charity I work with does during the summer. You can see the result at the bottom. I struggled with a bunch of other products. Adobe After Effects is the clear professional answer, but it has a bunch of flaws, the most relevant of which is that it’s a subscription-based piece of software, which I’m just fundamentally not a fan of. It’s also really expensive. And complicated. I wanted something simple; I didn’t mind paying for it, but not a subscription.

Luckily, I found exactly what I wanted, finally. It’s called Processing, and it’s basically a sandbox for doing motion graphics with programming. It’s not for everyone; it’s all done using scripting, there is no UI and no ability to drag stuff around. But for somebody like me who knew exactly what he wanted and knows how to code, it was a godsend: easy to install, easy to use, filled with documentation and examples. I immediately took to it, and the example below only took me about 2 hours to put together, including installing and learning how to use the thing. I love all the samples available in the community. It’s not going to be the perfect tool forever; for things that need hand animation or elaborate tweening, for example, it’s not the best fit. For that I will probably turn to Wick Editor; but Wick has a lot of limitations and issues; it’s so simple that it’s probably too simple.

http://www.processing.org

On The Arduboy - Day 70

A couple of years ago a friend introduced me to a cool little device. I had been interested in playing around with Arduinos and, of course, because I love video games, I was particularly interested in writing video games or video-game-like software for them. For those who don’t know, Arduino is a name for a set of different embedded systems; basically tiny open source computers that can do specific tiny tasks, like water a plant or measure temperature or control a motor. I was interested in using them to play retro video games, which it turns out is quite a cottage industry. The Arduboy is particularly cool because it’s very polished; it came out of a project a man did on his own to create a video game business card; essentially a version of tetris that was small enough and cheap enough that he could hand it out to potential business contacts, like at a conference. He then developed that idea commercially into a sort of thin and light Game Boy-esque device which is simultaneously very old school and has some modern touches, like a micro USB charging port. Most importantly, it’s programmable. I’ve spent the last year or so occasionally working on a game project which has been a fun way to exercise my creative muscles; I imagine I’m about 3-6 months away from being done with it.

If you’re interested, there’s a whole community and website around the Arduboy at, of course, www.arduboy.com. Check it out!

On Fleuret's - Day 69

I finally realized, a few months after moving in here, that I was paying about $1 for a beer, and $3 for the man standing there selling it to me.

Let me back up. I live in Oakland, in a part of the city that is desperately trying to gentrify, while other parts of the city desperately try to un-gentrify it. My apartment building is very nice and very deluxe, while less than a mile away is some pretty desperately poor areas. When I first moved into this apartment building, almost 2 years ago, one of the first things I started looking for was my local convenience store; the place I could go at 11pm to just get a beer or a loaf of bread. I quickly discovered that there was only one: Fleuret’s Market & Spirits, at the corner of San Pablo and William. At first, it annoyed me. First, the lack of choice. Second, the prices were crazy high; $3.79 for a can of chili, $5.99 for a pack of tortillas, etc. And it wasn’t even that great of a store. The two things it had going for it were the location, and the fact that the guy stayed open until midnight, every night.

I started going there, begrudgingly. Probably once or twice a week, usually because I either wanted beer or wine, or I just wanted a snack. Occasionally the guy inside would chat me up. I noticed that he was always there; and I mean always. I’ve been there on Christmas Eve; he was there. All day, every day. I started responding to his little comments; we’d talk about the weather, or the area. It was tough because he talked really fast and had a crazy thick accent so honestly I didn’t understand 90% of what he said. One day he came out from behind the counter to open the door for me and I realized he was incredibly short; he can’t be more than 5 feet tall, he just stands on a shelf behind the counter.

Oh yeah: the door is locked. Sometime, after about 8 or 9pm, you can count on the door being locked. You ring a bell, or more likely he sees you from inside the store, and he checks to make sure you’re somebody he recognizes, and then he opens it. I’m not sure what happens if he doesn’t recognize you. I’m guessing he doesn’t open the door.

I slowly began to realize: the reason this man runs the only convenience store near me is because he’s the only one crazy enough to do it. People get shot sometimes in my neighborhood, and sticking up the small Arab guy who runs the convenience store…well, let’s just say he seems like an easy target. I realized I was paying about $1 for that can of chili and $2.79 for him to stand there, selling it to me. $1 for his time, $0.79 for being brave enough to have a business at all, and then an extra $1 that we’ll call hazard pay.

I started trying to actually talk to him. He told me his name, but as God is my witness, despite him saying it 3 or 4 times, all I got was a sort of Akhmed, but that seems way too stereotypical to be true. Did he have a family? (Yes). How long had he been there? (A long time, although he used to be around the corner). Does he make any money? (He does OK, although the rent is incredibly high). Could he stock Hostess cupcakes? (He said he’d try but he’s at the mercy of the distributors willing to work with him). I told him one time he should have tortillas and then next time there were tortillas. He told me a story - which I’m sure is true - about getting illegally scammed out of his old lease because he got a new landlord and the guy just basically didn’t like Arabs.

It’s not that I love Fleuret’s. I don’t. The prices are still way too high and the selection is bad. When I move - as I will someday - I won’t dream of going there again. But I do love the man who runs Fleuret’s. And I love what Fleuret’s represents. To me, it tells the story of my neighborhood, way better than I ever could.

On Fonts To Impeach By - Day 68

First: this is not a political post. Just to be clear. If you’re triggered, this is a safe space. We’re not going to solve any big political questions here. The impetus for this post was me jogging on a treadmill at the gym while NBC talked about the impeachment hearings (for those living under a rock or outside the US, the United States legislature has impeached and is now preparing to try the president. It likely won’t go anywhere but is excellent political theater). At one point, they put up a portion of the document that’s currently being debated about how to proceed to conduct the trial in the Senate. The fact that they even need to debate this is a giant eye roll, but that’s besides the point. What I noticed, because I’m a dork, is the font that the document used. It was, in a word, terrible. As a graphic designer, I would never use that font for broadcast TV. The lines were so thin in parts that the crappy LCD TV at the gym just lost them completely, and the old school serifs were thick and blocky. However, it did have this sort of historical gravitas about it. It felt out of place and out of time, as if it came from a different era - and that’s likely because it did!

So: what is this font? Where did it come from? When did we decide to use it, and why, and why do we still use it? I started Googling for answers.

My first pass at Googling revealed that there was no “one true font” for the US government. But that didn’t entirely match up with my experience. There’s a particular font that’s always seemingly used for official US Federal documents, such as those dealing with the Senate. The government actually has its own free font released as open source: Public Sans. It’s a nice font, but it’s clearly not the font we’re looking for; way too modern. There’s also the “font” used in “top secret” documents, sort of a modern typewriter looking thing (probably because originally many of them were typed), but that’s not it either.

I actually then went and googled the impeachment documents and found, to my surprise, that they are actually written in a fairly modern looking Serif font - possibly Times New Roman. Not what I was looking for, either.

It turns out that what I wanted was “Century Schoolbook”, and the reason I wanted it is because it’s used by the Supreme Court (though possibly not always). But it wasn’t easy to figure this out, and even once I did, it wasn’t easy to figure out why. It seems like it’s just a stylistic choice. It brings to mind solidity and tradition - and the reason it does so is because millions of people used it to learn to read. As the name implies, it was invented in order to help kids read schoolbooks. That’s why it’s a Serif font; it’s meant to be printed and read at medium-to-large font sizes, which I suppose makes sense for legal documents, but doesn’t work nearly as well on computer or TV screens (especially bad ones like I have at the gym). According to this page at Microsoft, it was invented around 1919 and perfected by 1924.

So there you have at. Century Schoolbook.

On Fun - Day 67

2020 is off to a great start for me. I’ve gotten to fullfill some longstanding personal goals - going to bicycle repair school being the big one. I’ve done well at work. I’ve made new friends. Everything is going well.

The one thing that’s been niggling at me a bit though is that I feel like it would be nice to have more fun. Maybe it’s the winter, maybe it’s the impending doom of global warming, maybe it’s just western civilization malaise, but it feels like everyone is a bit in the doldrums lately, myself included from time to time. There’s a time and a place for reasonableness and responsibility, but there’s also a time for letting your inner child out and just having a good time, and that’s been lacking in my life lately. I’m talking about minigolf, Disney World, laughing so hard it hurts, comedy shows, hiking with chatty friends - just fun. Parties, too; birthday parties, holiday parties, any old reason parties. Maybe the Super Bowl is a good chance to get started; anyone want to invite me to a Super Bowl party?

Anyway, my personal goal for the next few months of 2020 is to mix in more silly fun. So if anybody has any suggstions, send them my way!

On Opera - Day 66

Today I went over to my friend Rachel’s house at her request and watched the first half of an opera: The Progress of the Rake. It was an interesting story, and the singing was quite impressive, so it made me wonder, as I have before: why don’t I like opera much? I mean, I can tolerate it. I can appreciate the magnificence of their voices and the way they approach their subject. I never really crave opera, though. Which is a bit odd, because I enjoy so many of the things that are like opera. I love musicals; one of the best times of my life was the time I lived in New York City for a while and got to watch Broadway almost every week. And I love live performance in general: the symphony, plays, live music, etc. Usually one of my comments about life is that if someone is passionate about what they do and good at it, I’ll enjoy watching them. But opera just feels oddly disconnected from my experience. It’s not particularly abstruse any more than, say, classical symphony, and yet I don’t connect with it as well. I thought perhaps it was the language barrier, but I saw La Boheme in English and it still just didn’t quite work for me. Perhaps its the characterization and caricaturization of emotions? But of course they do that in musicals just as much if not more so.

Yeah, I really don’t know what it is! I guess you just can’t love everything.

On Eggs - Day 65

I really, really like eggs. Yes, I know this blog is random. This is not a controversial opinion; I’ve rarely met anyone who didn’t like eggs. But I really like ‘em. Since I’ve started cooking at home, they’ve become a staple of my morning. I actually try not to eat them other than at breakfast because I think if I let myself, I would eat them every meal and probably burn out on them super quickly. They go so well with everything: spinach, cheese and tortilla chips is my favorite (kind of a gringo migas), but I’ll eat them with sausage, ham, green onions, parmesan, poached, fried, scrambled - you name it. Usually I just crack them right into a pan with a bit of spray oil and let them sorta lightly pan fry, because it’s easiest and very tasty. But sometimes I mix it up with scrambling, or cooking them on top of rice, or letting them just meld in with a tortilla while they’re cooking. I don’t know why they’re so tasty; part of it is the protein and fat, which I love.

I’ve always said I could be a vegetarian (in fact I was one time for about 6 months), but I could never go vegan. Cheese and eggs are just way, way too easy, versatile and delicious for me to give up. I’ve had meat substitutes that I really enjoyed, but I’ve never had an egg substitute that was anything other than a cooking tool or, well, gross.

I try to buy cage free eggs, free range and organic. I do feel bad for the chickens; it can’t be a lot of fun to just sit there and poop out eggs all day for humans. I would love for science to find us a replacement, but in the meantime, it seems like at least it’s better than meat (which I still eat anyways).

Eggs! They’re tasty!

On Confidence Words - Day 64

Lately I’ve been noticing something interesting about my writing that I’d like to see if I can correct, and I wanted to mention it because others of you might recognize it in your own writing. I had the opportunity in the last few weeks to write some documents which were edited by people who are much better writers than myself, and one thing I noticed was them tightening up my prose. In particular, I noticed that I used certain words; I would call these “confidence words”, or more accurately “lack of confidence words”. These are words like “basically” or “generally” or “largely”, or phrases like “for the most part”. They are words and phrases which I was subconsciously inserting into my prose that communicated a lack of confidence in my own ideas and which made the prose harder to read. (See, in that last sentence alone, I originally wrote “which I guess I was subconsciously”, another great confidence phrase). I’m going to make a concerted effort to take these words out of my writing; if I mess it up, catch me and let me know!

On Bart - Day 63

I am really grateful for BART. BART, as anyone from the Bay Area knows stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit. It’s our train. There are other trains that connect with BART and form an area network, most notably Caltrain and the MUNI Metro, but BART is the backbone of the Bay Area. It is definitely not perfect. Sometimes the trains are pretty dirty. Sometimes weird crap happens. But by and large, it’s a really efficient and effective way of getting around (as long as you want to go to places that are near BART). I used to live in NYC with its vaunted Subway system and I can tell you I prefer BART (though a better comparison is to the LIRR). I live right on top of a BART stop, the 19th St. Oakland stop, but oftentimes I bike over to the West Oakland stop, which is in a pretty rough part of town but has the advantage of being a choke point to go under the Bay, and thus has every train stop at it. I’ve ridden BART hundreds, maybe thousands of times, and with very rare exceptions, it gets me where I want to go, without a lot of fuss. There’s places to put your bikes, it’s not usually too crazy busy unless it’s rush hour, and it’s kinda expensive but honestly less expensive than any other way of getting around. The Clipper card system works, the seats are okayishly comfy; it’s pretty much the essence of a working man’s commuter train system. As a bonus, it’s a great way to go on a bike ride; just target a stop of the train for the end of the ride and you can get home easily.

A lot of folks complain about BART, but I think that either they are stuck commuting on it during rush hour (which definitely can suck) or they just haven’t used other systems and don’t know how good they have it.

(P.S. Yes, I know that Europe has awesome trains that are way better. This is true. But BART is the best I’ve used in the US).

On Spokeland - Day 62

Yesterday I went to a volunteer meeting for an organization here in Oakland called Spokeland which is sort of a nonprofit bike shop and educational area; somewhat similar to Bike Kitchen in San Francisco. It’s a community space where you can go and either buy a bike, have somebody fix your bike, or fix it yourself using their tools. It’s not designed to make money (which is good because it doesn’t), it’s just a bunch of folks who feel strongly that more people should know how to fix bikes. Not only do I think this is a great cause, it’s a win for me because I need practice fixing up bikes before I go on my next ride. So I think I’ll be spending some serious time there, both fixing bikes and putting together bikes out of my parts they already have; in fact I’m going over there today to do just that! If you live in the East Bay and need a bike, need to donate an old bike, or want to fix up your old bike in time for some better weather, then come on by!

www.spokeland.org, on 37th near MLK.

On SF Sketchfest - Day 61

Yesterday I got to attend two really cool event courtesy of SF Sketchfest, a yearly “conference” of sorts where people come and perform or speak about comedy. Living in SF sometimes has some awesome advantages, and one of them is access to people I never thought I’d meet or see in person. Yesterday was a case in point: in the afternoon, I went to a “Conversation with The Monkees”, which turned out to be Michael Nesmith and Mickey Dolenz, in person (!), in an intimate setting, just basically bullshitting about their lives, what it was like to be in the Monkees, what they’re up to now and how they feel about life and the music and movie industry. It was amazing; I’ve watched those guys so many times on TV, listened to their music, and there they were! The thing I took away the most was how lucky they felt and how happy they were to just be themselves, to have been in the Monkees, and what a goofy exercise this whole being alive thing is, which I think is an awesome way to look at things.

In the evening, I went to a 35th anniversary showing of the movie Clue, and a Q&A with John Landis - the director and writer - and two of the actresses, Colleen Camp (Yvette) and the woman who played the Singing Telegram Lady who it turns out is a famous LA punk musician and star of the Go-Gos. Anyway, it was awesome watching the movie on the big screen with an audience of folks who all love the movie, but the best part was listening to John, who was a charming and totally hilarious old British man with great memories and awesome comedic timing. Listening to him talk about meeting Michael Jackson and having him bring him pizza was the best, and what was even more awesome was seeing it with my brother.

So yeah, life is good sometimes, and living in the Bay Area can be worth it.

On Biking the Golden Gate - Day 60

Yesterday I rode over the Golden Gate Bridge with a friend. I’ve done that many times, but each time I do it’s still a pretty awesome experience. San Francisco has done a great job of making the bridge accessible to pedestrians and cyclists. Of course this is not entirely a coincidence nor charity; it’s one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. I do t know if the tourists who were there yesterday knew how good they had it; the weather was clear and cloudless with a slightly chilly but actually quite reasonable temperature. I rode the bike I’d worked on in Ashland and everything worked great. I don’t really miss living in the Marina, but if I do miss one thing it’s riding up to and over the bridge right out my front door.

On Bike School Day 5 - Day 59

I would love to end with some plot twist, but there was no plot twist! Everything was awesome right up until the end. I teared up a little bit in the parking lot actually thinking about having to leave. It’s like a bike paradise, filled with cool people who are knowledgable and will take the time to slow down and impart that knowledge to you. Granted, it’s because you’re paying them, but you get the sense that if they could they would do it for free, and they certainly don’t make you feel like a “customer”. Anyway, we replaced the front fork on my bike. Rich had to actually hacksaw the headset off the bike; he said it was the first time he’d ever had to do that. PSA: if you ride on a trainer, make sure to put down a towel over the handlebars because your sweat goes right into that headset and salt water is incredibly corrosive. The level of gunk inside there was staggering. But now I have a fancy new carbon fork and super nice headset, and a bunch of great tools and of course a lot more knowledge and some new friends.

I need to get out more often. :)

On Bike School Day 3/4 - Day 58

I missed a day! Sorry to all my fan. ;). Anyway, I missed a day because it’s been really amazing and fun and also, unsurprisingly, overwhelming. I’m sitting in a British pub (of all things) trying to decompress after the last two days. I learned a ton about bikes; that is not surprising. What’s more surprising is that it’s been really nice chatting with all the people here. I went down to a local tool supplier and talked to them about giving the charity a wholesaler account. I talked to a veteran from Puerto Rico who arranges a bike trip to visit all the 9/11 memorials on 9/11 (they go the 600 miles from the Pentagon to New York City). I chatted with a guy who lives near Bend. I talked a lot to one of the staff members named Rich who took a promising career in Engineering and a Masters degree and ran off to join the circus, ending up in Oregon teaching bicycle repair. Super nice guy and clearly happy with his life, really enjoying teaching. He’s the one who hacksawed a part of my bike off.

I am really enjoying it up here. I need to do more things like this for myself. I’m tired, but it’s a good tired.

On Bike School Day 2 - Day 57

Day 2. I already talked yesterday about how learning makes me feel energized; today I realized that it also builds my self-esteem. There’s something very empowering about knowing how to do something and sharing that knowledge with other people. It makes you feel special; I suppose, in a way - at least in as much a way as anything else - it does make you special.

I don’t have as many specific, factual learnings available at the moment because, unfortunately, I left my little notebook back at school, but it was a great 11 hours of learning all about pedals, chainrings, chains and bottom brackets. Bottom brackets in particular was one of those topics that I was always a bit afraid of, but it turns out they are easy as pie. One thing I am really starting to take to heart is the importance of, and reliance on, tools. The bike industry - in a way that I imagine parallels the car industry - has so many manufacturer and job-specific tools. My bottom bracket, for example, which is made by Shimano, is trivial to remove, if you have the tool, and essentially impossible to remove if you don’t. If you wanted to have all the tools for all the bikes that exist, you’d have, well, you’d have a bike shop.

I spent the evening talking with this awesome guy, one of the instructors, named Rich who helped me with trying to figure out what, if anything, I should buy to help support Bike The US For MS this summer. Here’s a short list of his recommendations:

Bondhus hex key set
*Cone wrenches
Mariposa torque wrench 
*3 spoke wrenches
*Shimano TL-CN29 12-Speed Consumer-Grade Chain Tool
Cable cutter Shimano tl-ct12
Torx 10-30

There’s so much to learn! Yay bikes!

On Bike School Day 1 - Day 56

Today was day 1 of Bike Repair School, and - spoiler alert - I had a great time. This is something I’ve wanted to do for years, so to finally be here is very satisfying just to begin with. I think I would have even been OK with the school turning out to be a bit mediocre - but it’s anything but. In a way, it probably wouldn’t seem that impressive to somebody who wasn’t interested in the topic or didn’t know what to look for. But to me - who is neither of those - it is not even shy of amazing. I heard from the local hostel owner that people actually come from all over the world to go to school there, and I can understand why. I’ve never seen a more well-equipped bike repair facility; everything is immaculate, every tool is provided, and the place is spacious and immaculate. From the outside it doesn’t appear to be anything special but once you get inside it is clearly a custom built facility with one purpose in mind: to teach you how to repair a bicycle. Particularly impressive was the state-of-the-art digital whiteboard facility which let the teachers draw dynamically on top of custom notebooks filled with schematics and drawings on-the-fly. I’ve already learned a few things, not least of which include:

Learning things is incredibly fun and exhilarating. It restores my joy at being alive and my faith in humanity. I knew that already of course, but it just further cements how much I love school, and how much I love learning about something I’m passionate about.

I like fixing bikes. It triggers the same puzzle-solving joy that writing code does; figuring out how to use a tool to solve a mystery and get a job done.

Today we specifically worked on a couple of topics, some of which I knew some about and at least one topic I knew very little about: we worked on tires, tubes, and hubs, and we learned how to use a bike stand and some general repair tips. (We got a slow start because a portion of the morning was taken up with administrative stuff). Some useful individual tips I learned: you should use a bike stand by clamping it specifically to the seat post, You always want to start with a wrench that you know won’t fit inside (or around) and go up or down until you find the right one. Also Shimano parts don’t use Phillips screws, they use JIS, which looks similar but is actually totally different. You should shift to the smallest cog before removing a rear tire, you never want to touch a disc brake rotor, and you have to have the narrow end of a quick release spring towards the inside or they won’t go back on.

Of particular interest was taking apart a bike hub and repacking the bearings, which I had never done and didn’t know how to do. We also got a full lecture on how bike hub freewheels work, which I kinda sorta knew but really didn’t.

All in all, an amazing beginning!

On Unknowing - Day 55

Greetings from Ashland, Oregon where I just drove up to attend bike school at UBI. I’ll be here all week. But more about that tomorrow. Today I wanted to talk about the experience of driving up here with no speedometer. I recently took over my brother’s Chevy Cavalier, which is a beloved car with a lot of character but a marked lack of functioning equipment, most relevantly basically all the dials in the dashboard. So I drove up here - about 500 miles - with no idea how fast I was going. Of course, that’s not true; most of the time I had a pretty good idea based on the behavior of my fellow drivers and little cues, like whether I was passing the semis. Also, you wouldn’t know this until you don’t have a functioning speedometer, but those little roadside “You are going this fast” signs are remarkably useful. It turns out that - unsurprisingly - I underestimated my speed by about 5-10%. So I just took a little bit off what I thought I should drive and everything was fine.

But, spiritually, it was a really interesting experience. There’s something oddly freeing about not having any idea how fast you’re really going. I’m certainly not recommending that anybody try it on purpose, but given that I was stuck with it, I tried to really investigate for myself what it felt like. Usually I pay a lot of attention to my speed. I am basically a fifth grader at heart, which means I’m terrified of breaking rules. This is not to say I’m patient or dumb enough to drive the speed limit; I have a 10 mile rule, which has held me in good stead. But I always know how fast I’m going. Except suddenly I didn’t. The first hundred miles or so it really bothered me. But after a while, my brain just kinda unclenched. And except for a few specific moments the rest of the way up - like going downhill - I really stopped worrying about it.

The implications are obvious. All day we over-data ourselves. Likes, emails, step counts: we crave data about ourselves and other people. But how useful is it, really? Do we really need to know?

Maybe, just maybe, we don’t.

On Running Consistently 2 - Day 54

40 days later, I thought I would update with how the effort to run a 5K every day and get my time down is coming along. The short answer: it isn’t going as fast as it was before, but I’m the pace is still good; it’s still going quite well. I’ve been missing days here and there, for various reasons - mostly mental - but I’m still making progress. As of last time, I believe I was down to an 8:41 pace. I’m now at a 7:27 pace as of today. That’s a 23:11 5k. This is still nowhere near my personal best, but it’s definitely a nice serious drop. So it took 40 days to go down 1:14, that’s about 1.9 seconds/day. If I were to keep up this new pace I would get to 7:00 in about 15 days, and then 6:30 in about another 16 days, or roughly the end of January. I don’t know what my exact personal best is, but I know it’s above 6:00/mi, so if I got to that, I know I would have beat it. That would happen roughly around mid February - if I kept my current pace, but of course I won’t. I would anticipate being able to get there before my birthday in early April. My guess is Mid-March. One good thing: I’ve yet to fail once I start. That is, every time I got on the treadmill to run slightly faster, I did. The days you see with a flat line means I just missed that day. My sense is that I have another 0:30/mi to give without too much difficulty; it’s mostly a mental challenge to get on the treadmill. After that, I think the next 0:30/mi are going to be interesting. And then after that, it’s anybody’s guess. My guess is that my first “failure day” will happen somewhere in that 6:15-6:45 range. I’m committed to powering through the first failure or two, but I don’t want to turn this into a total grind or injure myself, so once I’m failing more than I’m succeeding, I’ll probably call it a day and back off. If I failed 2 days in a row or 3 days out of 5, I’d probably stop.

Somewhere in there, in order to keep making progress, I probably will have to alter other things: my sleep schedule, my diet, maybe even drop a few pounds. I’m willing to do some of that, although again, I don’t really want this to be a full frontal attack. The goal isn’t really to see what’s the best I could ever do; it’s more about being consistent and following through on a challenge.

On New Years - Day 53

It seems appropriate to spend at least one day of the blog’s time worth talking about New Years, and the idea of New Years Resolutions. You might expect me to be cynical about these, but you’d be wrong: I think it’s very human to want to have a traditional moment for reflecting on how we can be better people. We can’t think about that all the time or we go crazy from anxiety, but we also need to grow as people. So here are a few of mine:
- Working on getting my 5K time down; I’m at 7:30/mi now, I’d like to get to 6:00/mi.
- Building more meaningful relationships with other people
- Producing regular video content through the studio
- Going to bed by midnight every day
- Blog every day
- Doing 100 pushups at one time

There are more, but those are good examples! I’m honestly looking forward to 2020: I think it’s going to be a great year for my own personal development, and I can only sincerely hope that it’s a good year for the world in general as well!