Nightsongs
This email was going to be about the band Stars. It was going to be about how I discovered Stars and then downloaded a bunch of their songs on Limewire (some...
The year of moss
First: I published my annual end of year post, with nine hours to spare! (I still haven't rebuilt my blog since getting my hard drive wiped a couple months...
Towards yuletide
There's been a lot of dialogue this week about how to spend your holidays. There are some terrible takes: Whatever you’re hustling for, take note: most...
Moving days
I moved apartments this weekend. Here are some thoughts on moving: I am the kind of person whose identity is very much wrapped up in his living space, which...
Where you want to be forever
I think it's one of the most beautiful pieces of jazz ever composed. Listening to it is like watching snow through a window. The room is warm, something is...
In praise of a backlog
I have not written about Buttondown in a while, because of two reasons: I have been very busy! The maelstrom of a year's end is at times all-consuming, and...
A cure for what ails you
I flew back from Richmond on Friday. There are many things I dislike about flying, but they are all redeemed by flying giving me the ability to read without...
Electronic paper cuts
Last week I talked about the primordial joy of building technology. Today, I'm thinking about the opposite: the mountains of quiet frustrations that come...
The joy of programming
Your growth as an engineer is mostly defined by your climbing of the ladder of abstraction. Everyone's road is different, but the landmarks are pretty...
The shorter line
I mentioned last week that I was in Santa Ana for work. On my way back to Seattle, something on right on the edge of remarkability happened. I was flying...
Open water
I was in Santa Ana for the week for work stuff, and as one does in Santa Ana I found myself spending a lot of the time on a boat. I was talking with a broker...
Two tweets
Here are two tweets that have been stuck in my head since reading them: They are both true, and the contrast between them points to a fundamental tension...
Class of 1905 Senior Week
The Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair was in town this weekend, and naturally we went. There are few places that seem more worthy of love than the SABF; it takes...
Momentum
I've found that momentum in my side projects is easy to gain and easy to lose, especially for a project like Buttondown where there are a bunch of things...
Back home
It is overwhelming for me to be back home after time away. Overwhelming in a good way, I mean. My favorite part of any trip is the first two hours back in...
Resort switches
A quick email this week, because I promised myself leisure and I still have a few hours left in Paris: I picked up Ex-formation at a small bookshop in the...
Neglected herbs
One of my favorite possessions is 172 things to do in order to increase your level of accomplishment, a tiny booklet I picked up in The Regional Assembly of...
Red Zone Tasks
This Sunday marked the annual shift in Sunday habits: Out with a productive morning filled with a bike ride and maybe an omelette followed by reading in Cal...
A little bit older
I turned 25 this week. I wrote about it a little, and now I am tempted to write about writing about it. It was hard to write about turning 25 this year...
Knowing what's important
I mentioned last week that this month was my one-year anniversary at TenantBase: I have officially been living the startup/work-from-home lifestyle for a...
Run a line around your think
How do you do your best work? When I was at Amazon, there was a running joke that your IDE changed as you progressed in your career (or, to use the Amazon...
The source of the peach-blossom stream
The haze lifted yesterday, and with it came the first great summer day in a while. My partner was in New York this weekend, so I got to live like a bachelor....
The one about television
I. The Ringer wrote an interesting but mostly flawed piece arguing that television seasons are in general, too lean: And so, instead of 22 episodes of The...
Four days in Austin
We don't take enough trips. Let's just book some flights and figure out the rest later. A month later, we end up in Austin, on a balmy Thursday. My Apple...
Thirteen percent fluent
"In an old house in Paris / That was covered in vines / Lived twelve little girls / In two straight lines.” If you've been around me for the past week, you...
After the Sundance
This week is a reminder that when you live in a place for long enough, you have to watch some of your favorite parts of it fade: The Sundance on 9th is now...
Weekends
It is hard to go from a four-day weekend to a two-day weekend. It is literally half of the previous weekend. You get to Sunday, your hands are tired from...
Burger ROI
I was in California this week for work, from Wednesday to Friday. The office is in Orange County, which is not what most people imagine when I say "I was in...
Twelve hundred pounds of paint
Boeing offers a tour of their production facility (the largest building in the world by volume!), which is one of the auxiliary Seattle things that I never...
Thirty seven percent
A generalized answer to the optimal stopping problem (which is sort of a variant of the multi-armed bandit problem, which in my opinion is an infinitely...
Three mostly but not wholly unrelated pieces of tech media archaelogy
1. Anna Weiner is one of my favorite tech writers: you probably remember her from last year's earnest and perfect piece Uncanny Valley. Later in 2016, she...
Through lines
Some weeks have through lines: I can remember things like "this is the week where it became unbearably apparent that Seattle needs more air conditioning" or...
Building a better backscratcher
What I've been working on It is Memorial Day, and feels like it. It's eighty two degrees in Seattle: we opted to stay in town for the weekend, catching up on...
Two days in Portland
We got into Portland a little past midnight on Friday. M had a lacrosse tournament there, and a friend from college wanted to visit, so we decided to just...
Being on a train
I try and write these letters fairly spontaneously -- I sit down at a coffee shop on Sunday, I write for around thirty minutes, I make sure there are no...
On having packed enough
I'm writing this from the airport, because I'm going to Richmond. I'm writing this from the airport at 9pm (PST -- sorry for the late email, east coast...
Ten mostly disjunct statements and one question about podcasts
I know very little about podcasts. (I've been listening to them for all of like two years, which even in podcast years is not many years.). So, uh, keep that...
A brief, considered list of my coffeeshop heuristics
A strong diversity of seating options. The ideal is a 50/50 mix of tables (for working) and big chairs (for reading.) An extant but quiet ambient noise...
Spring cleaning
I've spent the past week getting rid of clothes. This is what I'm shipping out to Goodwill, right after I send this email: By my count, it's the following:...
Things are good
I spent the past week or so working on a thing. This is the thing: finally adding support for lists in @spoonbill_io. diving back into Twitter API-land after...
Ragnarok and Chikhai
There are a couple authors I will follow anywhere: Neil Gaiman is one of them. I've followed him to graveyards, to a mysterious pond at the end of dusty...
Half a year
This weekend was tax weekend for me. (Perhaps, more accurately, it is tax weekend for me -- I still need to dig out a couple lingering receipts and forms.)...
How to close the great distance between people
A NOTE March has gone by so quick. I say this every month, it seems -- and by the time March has gone by so quick, it means that 2017 has started to go by so...
Small chaos
([sighs deeply] Tinyletter is bad with links and they didn't work in the previous one. Sorry about the double email!) This weekend has been a pleasant...
Parking lots, heuristics, and a corgi in a box.
My partner and I have been going rock climbing every weekend for the past few months. (Okay, technically we're going bouldering, not rock climbing --...
Rest days
This is an email about me not knowing what I want to write in this email. The advantage of these little missives is that they are extemporaneous, and that...
One of those slow weeks
Some weeks are slow weeks because you're slow; other weeks are slow weeks because the world is slow. This was one of the weeks where I couldn't tell the...
It's snowing!
That's what I said Sunday night, as little flurries started gliding their way down to the Seattle streets. it was so faint that I couldn't tell if it was...
There and back again
I spent most of this week in Orange County, where my company is based. It was fun and valuable to actually be with folks who I almost entirely interact with...
So I have a cold.
There are, at least for me, two kinds of colds: the knock-you-on-your-ass kind of cold where you feel exhausted and can't really move or do anything beyond...