Last year was quite a year. Less than two weeks after my thirty-fifth birthday, I was in the hospital for five days from a blood clot in my kidney. That kicked off a year of focusing on my health. First, I had many specialist appointments for six months. I’m all good on the blood clot…

With temperatures in the single digits and sixteen inches of snow blanketing the world outside, my thoughts turn to spring. In my mind, I’m wandering alongside a stream, looking for telltale signs of a rising trout, or at least a place one might be hiding. Here are a few places I’m drawing inspiration as I…

The hard part isn’t learning the finer points of prompt engineering, how to set up and use agents, or how to connect the right systems for necessary context. The hard part is choosing when using AI is appropriate and when it isn’t. Choosing which output is acceptable and which isn’t. Choosing what to work on…

Right after I woke up this morning, Charlie came in with a card that he and Amanda made for me, and he was really excited to give it to me and wish me a happy birthday. So sweet. I think I’ll remember this as the year I got back into making things after a couple…

What is the difference between these birthday posts and the year-end posts? The dust has settled on the new year reflections and this is a good time to think about my past year and the coming year outside of the context of holidays and resolutions. This morning Amanda and Charlie put out some birthday decorations…

Since I’m working today, we celebrated yesterday with a day trip to Kingston and Woodstock, where we visited a bunch of indie bookstores and two restaurants I’ve wanted to try. It was a really nice day! I think this year has gone by faster than any year in recent memory. It has been a great…

I had a good conversation with Russell Hunter, one of my coworkers at Automattic. He mentioned some uses of AI like ChatGPT that I hadn’t considered: That got me thinking a bit more afterward as well: In general, I think people focusing on how “dull” or “mediocre” the ChatGPT writing is misses the point. The…

I used to want every new device and cool gadget. I watched keynotes, preordered things, scouted Kickstarter for the latest and greatest. Now my iPhone is 3 generations behind and I have no intention of upgrading until it dies. I’ve lost count of how many generation behind the iPad I’m writing this on is. I…

On a recent episode of Office Hours, a listener asked about the purpose of social media. Isaac and TK recommended taking a pragmatic approach. Here is my take on what that looks like. Bonus: The blogs I read, newsletters I subscribe to, podcasts I listen to, and magazines I read.

Sometimes you have to stop what you are doing and climb out on the roof to take a #ManhattanSkyline photo because the sunset is so beautiful. #nofilter

I’m very torn on jury duty. I despise politics, I don’t vote, I rarely follow the news, and I think that most laws should be nullified. I’d prefer to be rid of the whole business. On the other hand, I deeply believe in justice and want reasonable, thoughtful people on juries. I’ve so far avoided…

They used to make elevators here. Now it is where they make NYC’s subway cars.

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Garden garlic! 👨‍🌾