Notes on Zach Nielsen's Blog

Switching back to Apple Music

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Officiallly switching back to Apple Music after a 1.5 year dalliance with Spotify. The recommendations were definitely good, the podcasts were definitely lacking versus something like an Overcast.

Quick AI update for 2026

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I wanted to step back for a second to get into what AI is doing as we enter the majority of 2026.

Christmas break with Opus 4.5 was really where Claude Code exploded in popularity. I think it had been pretty solid for awhile; I’ve been doing some machine learning stuff with sports data, and it’s been helpful for a bit.

I do think they lowered the usage on the $20 a month plan, it definitely doesn’t feel like I could spend the week using it.

Ninja Creami Macro Dishes

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

From this X thread

𝗕𝗜𝗥𝗧𝗛𝗗𝗔𝗬 𝗖𝗔𝗞𝗘 𝗪𝗛𝗜𝗥𝗟:

360ml Fat Free Fairlife
2 servings Sugar Free Cheesecake Jello Pudding Mix -3 squeezes of SweetLeaf Sweet Drops Vanilla Sweetener
1 serving True Nutrition French Vanilla Egg White Protein Powder
12g sprinkles
2g Xanthan Gum

350 Calories / 45g Protein

𝗖𝗜𝗡𝗡𝗔𝗠𝗢𝗡 𝗧𝗢𝗔𝗦𝗧 𝗖𝗥𝗨𝗡𝗖𝗛 𝗦𝗪𝗜𝗥𝗟:

300ml Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk
120ml Whole Milk from Fairlife
68g Trueflavor Cinnamon Toast Swirl Egg White Protein Powder from True Nutrition
41g Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal
2g Xanthan Gum

500 calories / 58g protein

Sora 2 Review

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I wanted to note some initial thoughts down on two new products that have just hit my inbox today. The first is Sora (the app) running Sora 2 (the model), used for video generation, and the second is the Droid CLI by Factory. This will be the review for Sora and Sora 2 respectively.

Sora is pretty fun! I’m seeing a ton of historical figure selfie videos (i.e. Jesus at the last supper), style transfers (what if Spongebob is in the Oppenheimer film universe), and other Ridiculous videos that are impossible, i.e. a cop arresting a dog for stealing beef at Costco. Overall the videos are pretty good. Text is still troublesome, but it’s wild at how good it gets. For example, I had a UGC tiktok style video with generated subtitles and it only missed one word out of the bunch.

Great Tables in Python

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been going through the archives of the great newsletter The F5. Flagging this for myself - I was wondering how the tables looked so good, and he mentions using the Great Tables package in Python. Definitely worth investigating!

AI Software that Doesn't Exist

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

After reading more AI apps that should exist, I decided I had to note it(similar to my first post).

There are some solid ideas here! I particularly like a camera app that takes your iPhone photos and uses nano-banana to make them better.

I also like this recommendation engine

A recommendation engine that looks at my browsing history, sees what blog posts or articles I spent the most time on, then searches the web every night for things I should be reading that I’m not. In the morning I should get a digest of links. I also want to be able to give feedback on which were good suggestions and which weren’t to improve the next day’s digest.

Simple Sabotage Rules for White Collar Workers

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I recently came across the OSS Simple Sabotage Rules again. After finding out that it’s in Project Gutenberg, I thought it’d be a ton of fun to list some of the rules that apply to white collar workers.

“Insist on doing everything through ‘channels.’ Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.” “Make ‘speeches.’ Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your ‘points’ by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate ‘patriotic’ comments.” “When possible, refer all matters to committees, for ‘further study and consideration.’ Attempt to make the committees as large as possible—never less than five.” “Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.” “Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.” “Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.” “Advocate ‘caution.’ Be ‘reasonable’ and urge your fellow-conferees to be ‘reasonable’ and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.” “Be worried about the propriety of any decision—raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.” “Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, paychecks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.” “Apply all regulations to the last letter.”

AI and Deep Thinking

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I was listening to Derek Thompson’s most recent podcast with Cal Newport. As a long time Cal Newport stan, it hit on a lot of themes that you’d expect; society is getting worse dealing with deep thinking.

In particular I really enjoyed Derek talking about his idea of time under tension for the mind as a metric to strive for, particularly in regards with children.

I think with AI there’s a really fine balance between being a helpful tool (i.e. a personalized Google), and outsourcing a ton of thinking to it (i.e., what’s my bosses’ tone in this email). I was struck by how many people were using it for a Best Man’s or Maid of Honor’s speech; this super personal thing just outsourced feels so wacky to me.

Essay Meta Primer

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been meaning to link to this tweet by Patrick Mckenzie for a bit, where he explains the essay meta. In short, JD Vance told the New York Times that he read the pretty famous AI 2027 paper.

I think this is a great example of agency; a $14 domain name and some fancy css can be a great way to get a point across to a Serious Person. It’s the new example of a resume on nice paper, sending doughnuts to their office, etc.

Notes on Nobody Knows How To Build With AI Yet

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A really good post on the current AI landscape. Some thoughts:

Maybe that’s all any documentation is. Messages to future confused versions of ourselves.

I totally agree with this. I find that the more documentation you can feed AI, the better. I’m constantly noting “check off @TODOS.md, note this in @README.md”

If readme gets too big, use subagents to clean up the documentation and move it into a /legacy. File folders are free!

Throw more tokens at problems

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Channeling this idea - when in doubt, throw more tokens at the problem, docuemnt lessons learned, and redo it.

LLM Analyst Benchmark Idea

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One idea I had for an LLM benchmark - rather than Javascript web dev, I’d want something that’s a bit more multi functional. I’d use an analyst level analysis all the time; something like transcribe Caesar’s Entertainment, Boyd Gaming, and MGM’s most recent earnings calls, pull out any takeaways regarding marketing efficiency and spend, and put them together in a nice document.

That would be great! I’m sure startups do that, but I wonder how good Deep Research would cover that.

Gemini Nano in Chrome

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Found these excellent instructions via the always excellent Swyx on using the new Nano model in every chrome.

I’m a big Safari guy, but I’m super jealous of Chrome’s extension library. This would be a great tool to enhance your workflow.

Transcribing Tips via OpenAI's Whisper API.”

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Really good post on hacker news for Transcribing tips (comments). Some notes:

A commentor had the idea to also strip silences with the following FFMPEG code block. Less silence means less room for hallucinations, and it’s also cheaper!

ffmpeg -i video-audio.m4a \
 -af "silenceremove=start_periods=1:start_duration=0:start_threshold=-50dB:\
                    stop_periods=-1:stop_duration=0.02:stop_threshold=-50dB,\
                    apad=pad_dur=0.02" \
 -c:a aac -b:a 128k output_minpause.m4a -y

You can also speed up the audio to reduce time as well

ffmpeg -i video-audio.m4a -filter:a “atempo=2.0” -ac 1 -b:a 64k video-audio-2x.mp3

All We See are Shadows Notes Recast Video Notes

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Really good video by the Recast folks. Some choice quotes on marketing:

Experiments are “good” to the extent that they can provide support for or against a certain hypothesis Various model metrics (R-Squared, MAPE, convergence) don’t tell you if your model is good, you need internal or external validity checks. MMM’s should be assumed to be wrong until they’re proven to be correect Continuously test hypotheses, and we want to falsify these hypotheses as quick as possible. We don’t need truth, we just need to improve our marketing a little bit every day.

Subagents in Amp

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Fun post by Amp on how subagents may be changing the current meta consisting of a project plan and carefully managing scope.

What does that mean for how we interact with agents? Is the meta of having plan files outdated? Is careful conversation management a thing of the past if now a single conversation with one main agent can potentially contain tens and tens of other conversations with subagents? Can the agent now go on for much longer, solving more complex tasks, because it doesn’t have to concern itself with the details of editing single files anymore?

Poddigest Update

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Quick update on my Poddigests.com app. I took it down as the Postgres DB on replit was costing a ton of money a month. I think I want to rewrite it in Python anyway, so might as well transfer to SQLlite.

Airbnb Update

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a bit since Airbnb released their most recent update. I’m not exactly sure what constitutes an experience, but the no brainer for me is having Airbnb integrate with Bachelor(ette) Party setup people, or Instacart, to get groceries in your apartment night 1, or something. As a family man, I’m not interested in skydiving or a foodie scene, and more interested in getting groceries night one.

Only in Poland

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Really cool tweet talking about project creation. I love the idea of having a bug board for a country. I think the U.S. is in a bit better of a place (hopefully??) to do this than Poland, but it’s still a cool idea.

Hocking Modeling - Postseason 2025

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I have a broader review of my new NHL Forecasts coming soon, but one thing I wanted to call out specifically. Colorado/Dallas was a 50/50 ish series before any games were played. When Colorado won the first away game, it added about 4.5% of win prob to their Stanley Cup chances, going from 6.1% to 10.6%.

They’re playing again tonight, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens with this game when I rerun the results tonight/early tomorrow. Overall it’s been fascinating!

Terminal Coding Tools

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Lots of great coding terminal tools floating around. One that I want to note is GPTME. Using Github as a memory bank is a really cool idea. More definitely to come here.

Crossover 25

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Foudn a good article on Mac Gaming by Macsparky

It seems pretty good! I always think gaming on Macs should be a bigger deal than it is. Whenver I get free time back, I’m absolutely going to look this up.

Gemini Code

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A few days late, but found Gemini Code which is super cool. Definitely have to poke around with this library a bit more.

Creator was the PM for NotebookLLM, a super fun X follow.

MCP Initial Thoughts

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I also got MCP hooked up on my local Claude app today. Many more thoughts to come here once I poke around with it a bit more. My initial vibe is plug ins, but with everything which is neat.

Some inital security concerns - what happens if a webpage, file, etc. contains an exfill message?

Arco Game

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Found a rec for a new game.

Recurse Coding Retreat

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I found this coding retreat via Dan Snow’s excellent blog and post and it seems reallly cool! As someone who codes very creatively let’s say, I’d love to do something like this to hone my skills, but a few things stop me:

This seems to be more for app design, less for the meat and potatoes data analysis / modeling I tend to enjoy.
I do know how to code enough for my purposes - some of the other interests (game design, computer vision, etc.) would almost require more of a classroom environment
I really enjoy my job!

Anyway, flagging for the records. Super fun.

Cursor for Writing

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

So it turns out that the cursor for writing… may just be Cursor? I’ve been having a blast loading up my Hugo site and vibe coding some changes:

New CSS
Digital Garden
Removed Mailchimp newsletter

Super fun to have it just all work with Sonnet 3.7. Next step in my mind is to have an LLM look at all of my posts for better categorization and tagging, but that’s a project for later.

AI Software that Doesn't Exist

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Really fun post from Grant Slatton on AI software that doesn’t exist yet. I always like flipping through posts on “Please build this tool!” to see how practical they are.

In particular, I really like the spaced repetition assistant.

AI can solve this. I want a browser extension that I give prompts about the kind of stuff I want it to create flashcards, how I want the flashcards to be structured, and it just creates them for me in the background as I browse.

Modern Vinyl

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I found this really fun article on MacStories on integrating vinyl into modern homeplay speakers. The real unlock is using the app Quanta to use an existing iPhone or iPad to AirPlay music from your turntable to any compatible playback device.

Vinyl is one of those things I want to get into more, but as someone who barely listens to msuic, it just never makes sense. Regardless, a very cool feature!

Translating with LLMs Case Study

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Really good comment on Hacker News on how to work with LLMs to professionally translate some prose (via the great Simon Willison).

One thing that immediately came to mind is the repetition with LLMs. Usually I’ll just fire off a zero-shot coding question, but this is making me rethink my strategy (or at least put together a tool for asking multiple LLMs at once!)

Great article.

Children's Education Tools

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Being a new parent comes with a host of challenges, amoung them being how unaware I was about the tasks I’d have to make the baby do (tummy tinme, crawling practice, etc.)

In an attempt to get ahead of it for the education aspect, I found this resource on using phonics for reading, specifically with the book Learn to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.

Separately, via this twitter thread, I found out about Dragonbox as well for Algebra practice. My child isn’t there yet, but soon will be and I’ll report on my findings.

Loading text from shortcuts

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’m putting together away to post more short term content from my phone. I think it’ll scratch that edge that Twitter, BlueSky, Mastodon, etc. will do, but I’ll be able to own all of my content. Let’s see.

Getting inspired by wild coding projects

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I want to start tracking all of the absolutely wild coding projects that I find. Awhile ago I found this project on HackerNews, and it is worth the read.

Quick Mastodon Update

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

So I’ve finally gotten into Mastodon - better late than never I suppose! A few things really made it worthwhile for me.

I briefly signed up for the main instance of Mastodon.social, but found it was too big for me. I then stumbled across omg.lol, which felt like a perfect fit. They were running a Valentine’s Day sale and I never looked back. So far I’ve been lurking (haven’t had a chance to post my introduction, for great reasons!), but eventually I’ll look to see what types of short form content make sense over there.

Quick Mastodon Update

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been experimenting with Mastodon recently - it’s long past time to move on from Twitter/X. Benedict Evan’s post on Twitter was an excellent catalyst for making the move.

To sign up for mastodon, I really strugged with the best way to do that. I ran into the following issues:

Do I pay for hosting so that I can use my own domain name?
If no, what instance should I sign up for?

As awesome as it would be to have my own domain name in use (and I love that, don’t get me wrong) I thought the best thing to do was to sign up on mastodon.social, and then figure out the rest later. I believe the search for users is better if you belong to the same instance, and figured free beats having to worry about setup.

OpenAi Update

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been thinking about OpenAi’s recent developer conference and release for the past few days. Lot’s to unpack (hello, larger context window), but I’ve been really fascinated by how big the “Create Your Own GPT” has gotten. Seeing how GPT can vary so wildly with simple prompting really is something to behold.

Installing nfl_data_py on Mac

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been trying to redownload nfl_data_py on my Mac after hosing my python installation. The error I kept running into was that python-snappy wouldn’t download, which kicked nfl_data_py out of the installation process. I googled around a bit and found this stackoverflow

What worked for me on the Mac was using homebrew to install python-snappy and then using the following command to link the two together.

CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include -L/usr/local/lib" pip install python-snappy

GPT-4 Working Notes

Fri, 12 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Some working notes on using GPT-4 to code (and LLM’s generally)

GPT-4 is definitely the move over GPT-3.5
It’s pretty clear when GPT loses the context window - sometimes it just makes more sense to paste the code into a new chat window to refresh.
Small contained steps are the way to approach the problem. Doing a ton of modeling / data stuff, the way seems to be “Looking for a dataframe that looks like this” over “I want a program that deals with this whole thing in one shot.”
Related: I haven’t really dealt with trying to get any data. Because the training log is capped in late 2021, would rather spend the development cycles with code rather than surfing the web.
The browsing plugin is fine. Not great, and there definitely is some manipulation needed to get it to actually surf the web. “Please Browse the Web” is an A+ prompt technique to do so
The other plugins definitely appear to be in Beta. I tried Notable and it never made a notebook. Need to continue to test out instacart and expedia.

Analytics Motto

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Metrics for my real friends, real tricks for my meh friends
— Jeremy B. Merrill¹

Via Jeremy’s excellent blog. ↩︎

Dusting off the website

Mon, 16 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

With all of the dust flying over Twitter and the API shutting down, I think it’s time to get back to writing. I’m fascinated to see what’s next for social media - lots of great developers have loads of time to spend improving the Fediverse/Mastodon/etc.

I’ve already been gathering inspiration for my inevitable redesign!

Library Visits

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Rediscovered the humble library and it’s been a game changer. Love the randomness of walking through the book rack and picking out whatever catches my eye. Anything from a big data book from 2017 to a remote work environment. And now they auto-renew unless someone actively is reserving it. What a winner!

Modal Tailwind Email Popup

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’m currently working on building out a new website in Django and one key component is an email capture system. I spent some time googling around and found this great post on building out an email capture popup form. Having the ability to capture emails is a great growth business hack.

Further Tableau Tricks

Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I have recently published several Tableau dashboards, which has me relearning many of Tableau’s foibles since I frequently used it in 2015. Some tips for the future:

One problem with a relative date picker (where you can pick both sides) is that both the start date and end date are fixed, even when new data comes in. This means that the end-user has to change the date whenever they launch a dashboard to show the most recent date. One fix with this is to use a date filter that has the ending date stuck.
Tableau still defaults to gray text (oddly), so it’s still worth changing it all to black to improve readability.
Similarly, it’s worth increasing the default font size to 10.
Tableau’s documentation is terrific and has many solved problems. Worth Googling any issues you might encounter (i.e., how to do a rolling average.)
When publishing a dashboard, two settings to check are to embed credentials into the dashboard instead of prompting the user to fill in their own. The second is to make sure you’re only publishing the dashboards without including the sheets.
Tableau has a hard time with comparable time periods such as Week to Date (WTD), Month to Date (MTD), and (YTD). I’ve been calculating these manually in SQL and porting them over, but it’s still not easy.

Overall, Tableau has been great to work with, especially with Google BigQuery. I’ll work to keep noting any gotchas in this document here.

Twitter as Inspiration

Sun, 04 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

As Austin Kleon notes, problems of output are so often problems of input. Twitter, for me, is a great way to find ideas from many walks to spark inspiration.

Now Twitter gets a bad rap, and I think that’s dependent on who you follow. Feel free to unfollow people! Feel free to mute tags and people! Keeping your feed trim and clean makes it easy to find the wheat and separate it from the chaff.

Analytics Approach to Scouting

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In my first post on the Big Data Cup, I talked about how I think I’m going to focus more on the Scouting dataset. This post will talk about how I will approach scouting a player.

When thinking about a GM’s role, I’d imagine that there are two competing desires when drafting a player: what’s the best player available at the moment, and what need do I need to fill at the moment? The first approach would be an NBA “Drafting the best talent” approach, while the second approach would be based more on need.

Big Data Cup 2021

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I was scrolling and found the Big Data Cup for 2021. In short, they’ll provide two data sets about Women’s Hockey, and I’ll perform some analysis on that data. The winner gets tickets to the conference in Canada.

The first dataset deals with scouting hockey players, while the second deals with Olympics level performance. I’m going to spend most of my time on the Scouting dataset, as I think it’s a more interesting problem to solve, and the lessons are more broadly applicable (what is the best player, what need am I trying to fulfill).

Git Commands to Update Site

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

So instead of having to Google what the git command is for me to update this website each time, I figured I might as well add them below for postarity.

git add .

git commit -m "This is the update message"

git push origin master

Now I’ll always have a reference - thank goodness for notes.

Codenames for Projects

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

As someone who always has project ideas turning around in his head, I’ve decided that they’ve been lacking one thing: codenames. Therefore, I’m going to start giving each of my projects code names.

I feel like my codenames should all be linked in some way which is yet to be determined,¹ but overall this should make writing them much more entertaining.

I’m leaning towards large animals of some sort ↩︎

Sports Betting cont.

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Thinking about it more, the NFL being so random means that any predictions have to be couched in probabilities. For example, the Saints were favored against the Bucs, but four turnovers later mean that the Bucs are advancing. If they were to play that game 10 or 100 times, how many times would the Bucs get those four turnovers? That’s the part I’m unclear on.

Similarly, it’s fascinating to see how the narratives quickly form. Drew Brees, throwing three interceptions, has his legacy at stake, but Tom Brady (the GOAT, admittedly) moves on, even though the defense carried the load.

Sports Betting for Wild Card Weekend

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Finally had some time to think through sports betting that happened over Wild Card Weekend. The one question for me was how “chalk” it was going to be, in that would common sense check out. It turned out that it mostly was the case - I thought that Buffalo would win but not cover, Saints would win, etc. There were some surprises for me - the Ravens winning was a biggie (until I heard the revenge stat), and the Browns beating the Steelers was the big upset.

Color Palette

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a super useful utility to help pick a good color setup. Design is tough, so this could be useful in finding what colors my next redesign should be.

Creating Yourself

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

George Bernard Shaw

Favicon Support

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

One last enhancement to make to this site eventually is including favicon support. See attached on how to do so. Should probably incorporate some sort of logo…

Adding Series to Hugo

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’m thinking about further improvements to the site - a series function would be great. Saving this link so I can revisit that.

Podcast Marketing

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Marketing through interviews - one thing if launching a podcast would be to have a bunch of interviews baked in, so that people repost them and use them to market.

Virtual Environment in VSCode

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Note to myself: open the whole folder of a project in VSCode to get the virtual environment right, not just the Python file.

Panic's Nova

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Really excited to try Panic’s Nova. Haven’t been able to find any reviews on it, so I’ll be blazing a trail

Instagram Reels Inital Impressions

Sun, 06 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Instagram Reels? More like instagram “Let’s Reel-y be sure to crop out the TikTok logo from our content that we’re reposting or scraping from popular TikTok accounts”

GPT-3 Creating Books and Authors

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

GPT-3 making up authors and books is crazy fascinating. Where’s it getting this from?

For every one of our failures, we had spreadsheets that looked awesome.

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

“For every one of our failures, we had spreadsheets that looked awesome.”

Scott Cook, founder of Intuit

Maximizing Functionality

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Listening to episode 380 of ATP, and Marco makes the distinction of not trying to maximize value, but trying to maximize functionality in a value range. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that distinction before, and I really enjoy it.

I only went out for a walk...

Sat, 16 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”

— John Muir

Be courteous to all but intimate with few...

Fri, 15 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

“Be courteous to all but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth.” – George Washington

via Swiss-miss

Dropbox Paper Mini Review

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been using Dropbox paper recently and it’s… quite good?

Animal Crossing and Covid

Sun, 05 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Animal crossing - the saving grace of #coronamergency2k20

Apple Arcade Initial Review

Sun, 29 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been experimenting with Apple Arcade and find myself really enjoying it. It’s a great way to find a game to spend some time with.

Podcast Consumption Covid

Sun, 22 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

My podcast consumption has taken a sharp decline with the advent of Covid-19 like I assume how many others have. It was interesting for me to see how much of that habit was driven by riding in a car.

May 2020 update: The Twitter account for Overcast tweeted out some stats:

Podcast listenership is slowly increasing toward pre-quarantine levels…

The first few weeks of quarantine were down about 16% from the prior average.

Spotify and Apple Music Thoughts

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Giving spotify another shot, and I’m shocked with how much better it is than Apple Music. The playlists Spotify creates blow Apple Music’s away

Pandas Column Data Type

Fri, 21 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I came across a weird bug that took me a few minutes to solve. I was using pandas get_dummies function (which was absolutely terrific) but wasn’t able to access the columns after.

After noodling for a minute, I used print(list(Data)) to see that the columns weren’t strings, so I just referred to them with the numbers. Tough bug which was interesting to fix.

Self Advocating

Thu, 13 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

“There’s a ton you can get in life if you’re willing to submit yourself to the mortifying horror of asking for it.”

Via swiss-miss

UNLV Rebels

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I am looking forward to rooting on my UNLV rebels today. Let’s continue to crush the competition! 🏀🏀

Carmelo and Vegas Lines

Tue, 11 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Something I’ve been looking at is the difference between 538’s Carmelo projections and the Vegas lines. Usually they’re pretty close, but there’s a certain percentage where they vary a bit. Interested in looking at this further…

Monks Facing Distractions

Tue, 11 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Loved this post from Kottke. Monks really struggled with distraction too! Crazy how everyone faces the same problems.

Napping 101

Tue, 11 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Really enjoying When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink. It’s enlightening about how bad we are at optimizing our behaviors. Of particular note is the section on napping, which I need to get better at.

“Down a cup of coffee. Seriously. The most efficient nap is the nappuccino. The caffeine won’t fully engage in your bloodstream for about twenty-five minutes, so drink up right before you lie down. If you’re not a coffee drinker, search online for an alternative drink that provides about two hundred milligrams of caffeine. (If you avoid caffeine, skip this step. Also reconsider your life choices.)”

Value in Data Pipeline

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The demand for data science truly has never been higher. It’s in demand, promised salaries are through the roof, etc. etc. While I do think learning data science is a worthy goal, in my experience companies aren’t there yet.

I think execs realize that the value is there, but they’re unsure how to take advantage of it. My recommendation ¹ is to focus first on delivering basic value. Visualizations, analysis, etc. From there, you can implement neural nets and regressions.

Public Transportation Mini Review

Wed, 08 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Public Transportation has to be the easiest way to move large amount of people. It has the added benefit of putting you in touch with people from all walks of life.

Updated

Thinking about this more, I keep thinking back to this idea that found the more lanes of traffic you add, the more traffic appears (as people get excited about the new road).

Public transit seems to be the most effecitve way to transit large amounts of people. I’m just not sure how to bring that to pass in a city like LA. Denver could be an example in how they used light rail to bring guests from their airport to the main city.

Saints Bugaboo Factor

Sun, 05 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

🏈 By planning on the Saints to win, I forgot about the bugaboo factor, in that the Vikings have them completely bugaboo’d from both the Minnesota Miracle to the Pass Interference disaster. You win some; you lose some

Last Day in Boston

Sat, 04 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a certain irony that on my last day in Boston, the following things happened:

It was foggy and poured all day
I stepped in a puddle
My flight got delayed

Beantown, ye shall be missed.

Pandas Max Columns Option

Wed, 25 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Please engrave pd.set_option('display.max_columns', None) on my tombstone because I forget about it every time I start a new project but it is so useful!

Polish comes from the cities, wisdom comes from the desert.

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

“Polish comes from the cities, wisdom comes from the desert.”

Frank Herbert, Dune

Halloween and Ribs

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Nothing says Halloween like leftover ribs. Looking forward to the start of a great holiday season (I tried to look for spooky emojis but couldn’t find any)

The best way to overcome it [the fear of death]...

Sun, 29 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

“The best way to overcome it [the fear of death]—so at least it seems to me—is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.”

Battlestar Galactica Mini Review

Tue, 24 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Finally watching Battlestar Galactica and it’s basically Outer Space West Wing 📺

Las Vegas Aces Winning

Sun, 15 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Great game tonight by the Las Vegas Aces! An automatic elimination game is buck wild, but glad to see they pulled it out! 🏀

“Too much intention creates tension.”

Fri, 19 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

“Too much intention creates tension.”

– Moojiji

Movie choice - Isn't It Romantic

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

📽 movie choice of the day: Isn’t It Romantic. A super fun and silly anti rom com rom com!

Forgetting to Download Music

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The future is forgetting to download your music off the cloud and being forced to listen to Loch Lomand covers on repeat

There is nothing more revealing than to see a thinking person walking...

Wed, 26 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

“There is nothing more revealing than to see a thinking person walking, just as there is nothing more revealing than to see a walking person thinking… Walking and thinking are in a perpetual relationship that is based on trust.”

— Thomas Bernard

Documenting Your Code

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Constant reminder: you’re probably not documenting your code enough. Every responsibility should have a checklist of tasks associated with it, ready to be handed off if need be.

Speed of Implementation

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

There is money to be made in increasing the speed of implementation

Visual Studio Code Mini Review

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Trying Visual Studio Code instead of Sublime Text - and I’m really liking it!

2019 WWDC

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Nothing like nerd Christmas!! Happy WWDC - Apples developer conference. Nothing better.

I want my Apple Car!

The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.

Sun, 26 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

“The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”

Amos Tversky in “The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds” by Michael Lewis

Louis L'amour Wandering Quote

Mon, 20 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

“We are, finally, all wanderers in search of knowledge. Most of us hold the dream of becoming something better than we are, something larger, richer, in some way more important to the world and ourselves. Too often, the way taken is the wrong way, with too much emphasis on what we want to have, rather than what we wish to become.”

— Louis L’Amour

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.

Mon, 20 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”

— Dr. Seuss

Nothing beats live sports

Wed, 15 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Nothing beats live sports. Seeing the Red Sox is always a highlight ⚾️

A New Way to Think about Mobility

Fri, 10 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Really smart thought in this piece by Horace Dediu.

“My proposal is to segment the market by trip distance. We have very short trips — let’s say, half a mile, or even a few hundred yards. Then you have all the way up to thousands of miles. When you look at the spectrum of distances that people want to go, they’re all served by the same vehicle. The car is a package, a bundle of trips. You prepay for all the trips your car can give you. It’s like getting a pick-up truck and using it once a year to take the Christmas tree home. That means that one trip a year is costing you $10,000 — and you’re carrying all that capacity the rest of the year, throwing away so much energy and CO2 in order to have that optionality. But you don’t need to have a big vehicle to deliver short miles. In other words, the un-bundling of the car will happen with small vehicles for small distances and big vehicles for big distances. And the most common trips are short trips, overwhelmingly so.”

Remote Meeting Software

Fri, 10 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Zach’s rules of remote meetings: the fancier the software, the more likely it is to not work.

Urbanization and Traffic

Thu, 09 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Urbanization: The terrifying thought that if you live in a city, traffic is only going to get worse.

Electric Scooters in DC

Fri, 03 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Currently vacationing in DC and they have Electric Scooters and I want to try one immediately.

Is there a possibility of me crashing? Yes absolutely. Does that deter me? Not at all.

Updated Reeder 4

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Could not be more excited that Reeder has been updated. Top 3 of apps I’ve used ever, if you’re into RSS. Favorite app by a mile. Welcome back.

Accidentally Twinning

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

At what age should you stop dressing your kids the same? Asking for the parents of twin 12 year olds that just walked past me

Excel Tips - Contiguious Data Ranges

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Contiguous data ranges in excel with no subtotal nonsense is absolutely key.

Slow Cooker Tips

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Hot take: a slow cooker is magic and wow why haven’t I been using this more often

Customer Acquisition

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Thinking about how to better direct customer acquisition - you’d want a model that says “There are x dollars over there, and it’s accessible/reasonably accessible/not at all accessible.

Where they are is easy with customer loyalty data, but the competitor intrusion specifics are the tough part. Worth thinking about.

Python in the Workplace

Tue, 26 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A few things about using Python in the workplace that are worth remembering:

Anaconda does not need Admin rights to install. This means that if you’re locked down on your computer, you can still use Python for basic data manipulation.
All good scripts require getting the data, doing the things, and then outputting it in a useable way. If you’re not hooked into any data sources, the “getting data” can be importing it via a manual download that you received from a front end export somewhere. One of my favorite scripts uses this exact technique.
Similarly, exporting can be as simple as another excel sheet. There’s a report I do that involves a bunch of crazy calculations, and then a pretty export table. For me, it’s worth automating the crazy calculations so that I can spend my time in better ways.
Be sure to spread the love - I don’t do a ton of reporting (thankfully), but others do and it’s worth remembering that this knowledge can be black magic to those less advanced. It’s worth spreading the good programming word to free the workers from their chains.
Be sure to take breaks. The goal here is for this to reduce stress, and Rome wasn’t built in a day. Plus, we’re ideally playing the long game here, so it’s worth doing and developing these skills.

Duke Upset Alert

Sun, 24 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Duke tied with 5 min left 👀👀

2019 Goals

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

My goal for 2019 is to think in a longer time frame - how can I set myself up for success in 2020? 2025? That’s the key to living the life I want to live.

Baselining a Model

Sat, 29 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

When building a model, a critical step is having an accurate baseline. If you get 95% of the accuracy doing linear regression, it’s not worth optimizing for that last five percent.

But sometimes it can be. Discuss this beforehand so everyone agrees on the subject

Virtual Environments in Python

Sun, 09 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Because I always forget how to make a virtual environment in python:

python3 -m venv directory-name

And then it’s activated with:

source directory/bin/activate

It’s deactivated by simply typing deactivate. Simple as that!

Apple Event and Mac Mini

Tue, 30 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Really excited about the Mac Mini news!! Great Apple event. I’m not that interested about the new iPad’s but I’ll have to wait and see them in person.

Very exciting times to be an Apple fan.

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.”

Mon, 08 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Things that didn’t exist when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008:

Uber
Instagram
Bitcoin
iPad
Snapchat
Apple Maps
Angry Birds
Kickstarter
GoFundMe
WhatsApp
Apple Watch
FB Messenger
Candy Crush
Pinterest
Alexa
Venmo
WeWork
WeChat
Tinder
Twitch
Siri
Square
Stripe
Slack

White Space is Excel's Pro Tip

Thu, 27 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Another excel pro tip: Leave plenty of white space at the top for summations and scratch work. Sums in the data range screw up formulas, and they often can’t be seen at the bottom.

iOS 12 and Reconfiguring a Writing Workflow

Tue, 18 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Looks like upgrading to iOS 12 finally broke my old version of Ulysses. Now comes excitement - reimagining my writing workflow

iOS Real Life Enhancements

Tue, 18 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Loving iOS 12 - the speed improvements are welcome, and I’m excited to see what the Screen Time feature says once there’s data behind it.

People and Computers

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

“People are fallible and computers are unforgiving.”

Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda has been a pretty good read for the Apple Fan

ABT

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

One acronym that’s come to mind recently is ABT.

Always Be Testing.

Housing and NIMBYism

Sat, 11 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Quote of the day:

“Housing is either a right or an investment.”

Either the value of it is increasing which precludes some people from having a place to live, or everyone gets access to it.

Useful in thinking about the incentives, NIMBYism, etc. People don’t want houses built next to them, because it lowers the value of their investment.

Amazon and Libries

Sun, 05 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

With all of the talk about Amazon controlling the libraries, I think Starbucks has quietly taken over that role. I walk in and it’s consistently packed.

Baseball Cap Tips

Sun, 05 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

One of these days I’ll figure out why a backwards baseball cap looks significantly cooler than a front facing baseball cap. Today is not that day.

2018 WWCD Reactions

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Great WWDC! Really excited for all of this notification news.

Celtics Performance

Sun, 27 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

What a basketball game. Proud of this Celtics team no matter what happens. 🏀

Goodhart's Law

Sun, 27 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Goodhart’s law says that a person (company, etc) optimizes for what they measure. The thought then is to make sure we’re measuring the right number.

Hulu's Inclusion of Commercials

Sun, 27 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Hulu’s inclusion of commercials is super apparent. If I can watch the same show on Netflix, I will. Not a great user experience in the slightest

Intro to Conferences/Networking

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been trying to put together the perfect “How to Succeed at X Conference” post. A huge help has been the multitude of “Surviving PyCon” posts. Can’t wait until I finally have a cheat sheet for myself.

LeBron James is Good at Basketball

Tue, 15 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

LeBron James in this Celtics game is just crazy. What a terrific player.

The Keys to Life

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Pick a goal to work towards
Figure out a series of steps to get to that goal
Execute

That’s it. That’s all there is.

Alto’s Odyssey

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I’ll keep it short. This is an excellent equal to a superb iOS game. Yes it is paid, but it is worth it. Here is a review if you are still unconvinced.

The four commands that really demonstrate how to use git and GitHub

Sat, 10 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

After hours of searching for a great git tutorial, this help page demonstrates all one needs to know.

KPI Doughnut Charts in Tableau

Mon, 15 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

How to Boost Productivity with Tableau

Journaling Versus Blogging

Fri, 03 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In a world of weakening privacy, is there value to posting things publicly?