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Book a Week – 2011

estimmel — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:52:29 +0000

Well, I didn’t fulfill my goal of reading a book each week this past year, in fact I didn’t even beat my number from 2010, but I did read several books this year as a result of the bookaweek challenge. I’ve listed them below in case you are keeping track or are just here looking for something good to read.

Gasoline by Quim Monzó
HTML5 For Web Designers by Jeremy Keith
The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson
On Writing by Stephen King
Cathedral by Nelson DeMille
The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
How To Think Like A Computer Scientist – Learning With Python by Allen Downey
Zer0 Day by Mark Rusinovich

In my defense I had a pretty busy year.

Back in California

estimmel — Wed, 11 May 2011 03:09:32 +0000

We’ve been back in California for almost exactly five weeks now and while there are (and will probably continue to be) some things I miss about New York, I have to admit that our quality of life has gone up significantly since our return to the west coast. The weather has been amazing and our new apartment lets in so much light through its east facing windows that you can’t help but start the day off early and with a smile on your face. As a substitute for Jenn’s favorite time of day, “glowy building time,” we are now able to enjoy “glowy room time” as the sunset beams though our west facing windows in the evening. Yes, you read that right, east and west facing windows – try that in an affordable apartment in New York! All of this sunlight makes us happy and after receiving our first electric bill today I can add that it makes our pocketbook happy as well.

It’s been a fast paced arrival though and we have filled our days, no doubt. Even though we were swamped with wedding planning mania (still going full tilt), I started work a mere five days after we arrived leaving much of the difficult home-making work to Jenn. Thankfully she tackled it like a champ and I chipped in where I could. I also decided it was time to pick up my training again and thanks to a schedule put together by Hal Higdon and handily added to my Google calendar by, you guessed it – Jenn, I have logged almost 25 miles of runs. Together we have added another 10+ miles of hikes exploring the green-spaces within a short drive of home.

There should be more posts (and pictures next time!) soon, so stay tuned!

Book a Week – 2010

estimmel — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 20:01:33 +0000

The year 2010 came to a close last night and, although I have never really made any resolutions, last year I set a goal to do something that seemed impossible to me at the time. The goal was to read one book every week for an entire year and for 14 weeks I was 100% successful. From January to April of 2010 I read one book every week. I was (and am) proud of myself for accomplishing that much. I am not sure I can claim to have read 14 books in the previous five years combined (excluding required reading for grad school and study material for my licensing exams) so 2010 was a good year in that respect.

Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle set me back a few weeks in late April / early May and eventually wound up being the one that knocked me off my stride. I don’t blame Murakami – the book is excellent and I now have two more of his sitting on my bookshelf since finishing that one. The writing is sublime, but it’s also full of mood and the “action” involves lots of brooding and sitting at the bottom of a well. It’s also quite long, but I digress.

My point is that while I did not (by a large margin) read a book a week in 2010, I did read 17 books for the pure joy and enlightenment of reading them last year and I plan to better that this year. I’ll optimistically call it my #bookaweek and publish my progress on Twitter as a little bit of a challenge to myself and while I will earnestly try to read a book every week, I will be satisfied to read 26 or even 18 books in 2011 and you should too!!

Here’s my list from 2010. I should also give credit to Julien for the inspiration. He’s got some good advice for anyone thinking of attempting this – maybe I should reread it today…

Happy 2011 – may it be filled with new adventures!

Contradiction and Ambiguity

estimmel — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 04:00:12 +0000

Brings to mind several conversations I’ve had in the past (and some I’m confident I will have again) but one special, perhaps momentous, conversation stands out. Sadly it has been recounted often enough to be left to the imagination here.

PS – I think this Stephenson guy might have a future. Really enjoying The Diamond Age. (Yes, I know is old. Yes I’ve read his other work. No, not all of it… The books are very long, I’m working on it.)

Relaxing on a Sunday morning

estimmel — Sun, 10 May 2009 15:30:58 +0000

It’s nice to sit in a cafe and just relax a little. Read a bit, draw… (ok, listen to Audible books and sketch on my iPhone… It’s the future…)

a new form of sketchbook

estimmel — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 01:37:45 +0000

![Sketch by Stef Kardos](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3389/3199887587_8c7fa409cc_m.jpg)

Photo/Sketch by [Stef Kardos](http://flickr.com/photos/stefsketches/)

I love these drawings. Done with an iPhone application called “Brushes.” Installed, but little used on *my* iPhone, [this series](http://flickr.com/photos/stefsketches/sets/72157607051336347/) is quite inspiring. It also makes me miss California.

[Check it out](http://flickr.com/photos/stefsketches/sets/72157607051336347/)

∎

sadly indeed…

estimmel — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:21:15 +0000

So many times I read xkcd and get a glimpse of that once possible future, the one where I pursue higher mathematics and have the intellectual prowess to make jokes that are truly funny, but somehow over my head. It gives me that good kind of anxiety that comes from being surrounded by really smart people. Other times I read it and see the present and it makes me laugh out loud because that’s really funny too (and still contains some pseudo-intellectual chicanery).

Other times, I see my life so clearly in these little stick figure gems that I can barely believe it. (That’s when I start sweeping for bugs…)

This, sadly or not, is not a true story for me, but the circumstances and \ahem\ tendencies are all pretty much par for the course.

∎

Typography

estimmel — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:28:07 +0000

It’s been awhile since I worked on this blog at any great length and as I look back over it I see that I have made the forthcoming promise to ‘pick it up again’ more than once – one might say more often than not! That being the case, I’m finally starting to feel like I have got it to a point where I can stand to look at the thing and that’s a large part of the battle for someone like me. I have a theme that is tweaked enough that I feel I can claim some small amount of credit for the aesthetic, but not so much that it’s breaking on every new page view. There is still some progress to be made – for instance, regularizing the sidebar. It pains me to look at all those horizontal lines somehow not lining up! I’ll probably also have to explore getting some of those excessive links onto a new page so the main page is less cluttered. Then there are the categories and tags and getting Markdown to work as well as figuring out a consistent posting schedule… but i digress.

I’ll leave you with a couple of typographic symbols that I learned about as I was wasting time surfing the web doing research. The first is called an asterism and is used to call attention to a passage or separate subchapters in a book. It looks like three asterisks set in a triangle as such (slightly larger for more clarity):

⁂

The second is called a tombstone which signifies the end of a proof and looks like a filled square as such (slightly larger for balance):

∎

And with that, I’ll solemnly swear (up and down and with a flourish!) to pick this blogging thing up again for 2009.

See you soon. ∎

How to Work Better by Fischli-Weiss-1991

estimmel — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:59:01 +0000

I could really use this pasted over my computer monitor at work… especially the first item. man, if I could master THAT one… woohoo baby! That would be money.

iPhone 2.2

estimmel — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 23:36:50 +0000

Nice visual cue added to the iPhone’s podcasts… Now, if you subscribe to a cast that publishes both audio and video, you can tell which is which. Very useful when trying to choose something to LISTEN to on the train or while walking.