It’s the beginning of a new year, so I figure it would be a good time for a reflective post. I could write about the pandemic or the political tension that seems to be ubiquitous these days, but I’d rather talk about something more fun and uplifting.
I also needed a catchy title using alliteration that I can reuse next year. Maybe “Mitchum’s Morbid Meditations” would be pretty accurate for 2020, but it didn’t seem like the sort of thing any of you would want to read.
In this post I just want to share some content I read, watched, or listened to last year that brought value to my life in some way. Maybe one of these will bring some to yours too.
The Queen’s Gambit
My wife and I really enjoyed watching this Netflix show together.
We both like playing chess. I win more often when we play long games, and she wins more often when we play shorter, blitz-style games. She’s very good at going with her gut and making solid moves, and I’m very bad about clumsily knocking over pieces when trying to move quickly.
We both enjoyed the show a lot and it got us playing more chess together, so it was a double win. It also inspired me to start educating myself more about the game.
The Simple Path To Wealth
Until recently, I was pretty ignorant about the stock market. This stock series by JL Collins helped changed that.
It taught me about how the market works and the advantages of investing in broad-based index funds over a long period of time. I can’t recommend it enough if you want to plan for your retirement and are confused about where to start. His sound advice cuts through all the noise and will deliver on the promise of the title of his blog if you hold the course.
Indie Hackers Podcast
Sometimes I daydream about creating my own profitable software product that I can share with others. So I really enjoyed listening to this podcast over the past year.
It’s basically a series of interviews with people who have started successful online businesses with very small amounts of funding and personnel. The tools for creating software products have improved tremendously in recent years, and have really broadened the possibilities for entrepreneurship.
Hearing these kinds of success stories inspire me to work on small projects of my own. Even if they don’t lead anywhere, I usually learn something new and enjoy the journey.
Christmas in the Trenches
I heard this John McCutcheon song for the first time this year and was really moved by it, especially once I learned about the history behind it.
It’s based on an event that actually happened on Christmas during World War I. Soldiers from opposing armies actually left the trenches, sang Christmas songs, and celebrated together before going back to war.
The message of the song is one of peace, and how “on each end of the rifle we’re the same”. I think the message really hit home with me this year as the political polarization has continued to rise in the country. Here’s a version of it by a guy I like to hear perform and preach.
The Mandalorian
I’m a big fan of both Star Wars and spaghetti westerns, so I’ve really enjoyed watching The Mandalorian series. I’m also really thankful I can mooch off my family’s Disney+ account.
I was less than thrilled with the new movie trilogy, but I think The Mandalorian has steered the franchise back in the right direction. Season two was a solid story that integrated fan favorite characters very well. I’m excited to see what the future holds for the franchise.
We may be running out of toilet paper during this pandemic, but there is no shortage of news. Each day new reports come out, and we feel like we have to be the first to soak up everything.
And we have so many questions. What’s going on? Should we wear masks? When will normal life return? Is the government infringing upon civil liberties? Who is to blame?
We want to be informed, and we want our friends to know we are informed.
Fortunately, there are plenty of experts ready and willing to share information that will completely confirm our prior opinions.
Perhaps being locked up in our homes is making us crave more information from the outside world. It’s possible, but I really don’t think this is something new. As technology has advanced the news has come at us at a faster and faster pace. With the internet now living in our pockets, the latest news is always just a glance away.
I see some problems with this. So much so that I’m going to try to convince you to stop reading the news. Or at least, cut back and be more diligent about your news consumption. It’s something I’ve been doing lately, and I’ve found it to be a positive change. I’ll share a few reasons why.
It’s Low Quality
News is cheaper to produce than ever before. This has led to a reduction in its overall quality. There are people whose job it is to write thousands of articles a year. This means they are writing multiple articles every single day.
It takes me several days of work just to crank out one JavaScript tutorial, and when I finish I’m still worried that I’ve left out an important detail or described something poorly. Now, lots of these people are probably better and faster writers than I am. But there is no possible way most of them have spent the time to understand each of the subjects they are covering at a deep level.
It’s Not Designed to Help You
By and large, today’s news is designed to produce outrage and confirm your biases. There are some exceptions, but news is mostly free. This means the advertisers are the customers. That makes you the product. And what the advertisers want is as big an audience as possible. Nothing draws bigger audiences than outrage inducing headlines and information that you can rub in the face of the “other team” on Facebook.
A disturbing result of this is that it leads to living in an echo chamber. What feels like staying informed is often just indulging in the most extreme stories and explanations that confirm your prior beliefs. Before long you’ll start viewing half the country as evil, when in reality most of them are probably a lot like you.
Of course, some stories really are egregious and deserving of our attention. Being outraged about true injustice is a healthy response. But when you find yourself getting worked up every single day over people you’ve never met, I’d say it’s time for some self-reflection.
There are Better Ways to Spend Your Time
I’ve been thinking about opportunity cost a lot lately. It applies to so many things in life, and news consumption is no exception.
You should stop to ask yourself some questions about the news you are reading. Will it be important to you two weeks from now? Will it help you make better decisions? Will it bring you peace? In short, are there other things you should be spending your time on?
It’s a good thing to stay informed of and connected to the world around you, but be wise about how you do it.
Prefer actively creating over passively consuming. Read time-tested content that adds value to your life. Read content from authors and journalists who have earned your trust and respect. Read content that will nudge you to think for yourself.
If you’re like me and struggle to get through even one book in a month, maybe we have no business consuming the junk food of today’s news.
Since I have the best readers in the world, you’re all probably asking the obvious, though slightly cynical question.
“So, should I stop reading your blog?”
To that I say, if my writing isn’t adding value to your life, then yes. Ironically, by taking my advice, you’ll be proving that it is. So actually no, you should probably subscribe 😜
Hello my dear readers. Apologies for the intentionally over the top click-bait headline. This post has nothing to do with that. I need all the readers I can get and I am not opposed to underhanded tactics.
I know most of you are here for programming content and JavaScript tutorials, and that’s what I try to consistently deliver on a haphazard, irregular basis. However, since we currently find ourselves in the midst of the apocalypse, it seems appropriate to talk about it. I’m sure historians will love to have first hand accounts of this event, so if nothing else, consider this post my contribution to the betterment of humanity. Lofty goals, I know.
I have to admit, I was hoping for more zombies and shotguns. This has to be the most boring of all doomsday scenarios. Overall though, it hasn’t affected me personally too much. I’ve been fortunate to keep my job (for now), and have been working from home the last few months. I know many have not been so lucky.
In some ways the change in routine has been good for me. I’ve been better about eating healthy and staying active each day. And for some reason, everybody is coming out of the woodwork to jump on a video call to catch up and play video games.
It’s an interesting phenomenon because nothing was stopping them from doing this before. I think we are appreciating our relationships more now that restrictions have been placed on them. I’ll be happy if that trend continues once this crisis is over.
I don’t claim to know exactly what the best course of action is. Any policy decision will have benefits and drawbacks, and it is frustrating to see politicians and media outlets pretend this is not the case.
My biggest disappointment in all this is this feeling I get that so many of the same petty divisions remain unresolved. I remember how the United States came to together as a nation in the weeks following 9/11. It didn’t last, but it was a good moment. It seems like we have bypassed that phase and went straight to assuming the worst intentions of those we disagree with.
I may be a bit too harsh with that analysis though. People act differently on social media than they do in real life. I’ve seen people making masks, donating to food banks, picking up groceries for the elderly, and using their talents to help their neighbors. That gives me hope and reminds me that the craziest people are often the most vocal. If you start feeling pessimistic about people it’s probably a good idea to get off social media and start interracting with people in your local community.
I’ll leave playing the blame game to the masochists who like dealing with angry commenters. Now that we’re in this mess, how do we get out of it? I’m sure people with more expertise can tell you all about testing, contact tracing, social distancing, flattening the curve, and all the rest. Like I said before, I don’t know exactly what the best course of action is. But I think there is a general approach that all reasonable people can agree with. Let’s look at three options:
Remain fully locked down indefinitely for months on end until a vaccine is (hopefully) developed while supply chains crumble, currency becomes worthless, and millions are forced into abject poverty.
Immediately release everyone to frolic around in Myrtle Beach while kissing everyone in sight.
Allow businesses to open responsibly and trust people to take appropriate measures to protect the most vulnerable.
To me, option three, while an imperfect solution, seems like the only viable one. I don’t think option one can be sustained, and option two is a bad idea under normal circumstances.
Once we can be confident that hospitals will not be overrun, we need to start getting people back to work. The timelines should look different for different geographical areas, but I think that’s the direction they need to be heading in.
And that’s about as controversial as I care to be in this post. The picture above sums up my position fairly well. I hope you all are staying safe and taking the appropriate precautions. Thanks for reading. If you want to hear more from me, you can subscribe to receive an email every time I post. That happens less often than I’d like, so you won’t have to worry about being bombarded with emails.
So here’s a weird post for you guys. Recently, some friends from work and I have been making jokes about a new game by indie developers called “Tem Tem.” It is basically just Pokemon put through a thesaurus. Trainers are tamers, poke balls are tem cards, gyms are dojos, etc. I started playing it and have thoroughly enjoyed it!
There is a Tem Tem trailer with a silly theme song that is stuck in our heads, but we haven’t been able to find the lyrics to the song anywhere. Since I did the hard work of listening and writing them down, I figured I might as well post them in the off chance that anybody else is searching for them.
If you got here through Google, welcome to my blog! Since you like video games you might be interested in learning how to make them yourself. My most popular tutorial teaches you how to make minesweeper.
Tem Tem Trailer:
Song Lyrics:
We’re ready to start the combat It’s time to reveal our Tem cards. Let’s do it, pick the contenders, and Tem Tem up! We’re eager to leave. The adventure begins. Our destiny waits overseas. Wisdom and faith, focus and stealth, honor and strength, courage to face those who could steal our fates. This journey will challenge us. We’ll struggle to find and beat them all. No matter how long is the path of commitment to change at the end we’ll approach our goals. Great tamers awaiting us, all together we’ll build a bright future and Tem Tem up!
While this blog can be a bit all over the place, I do try to write mostly about topics where I am not the primary focus of attention. I hope to draw you in with the way I express ideas through my writing style, not through personal stories about my life. However, something happened to me yesterday that was just too ridiculous not to share.
The Accident
It all started because I had some clothes in the dryer that needed drying. I began to approach the dryer from the other side of my apartment while simultaneously checking the latest news on my phone.
While the rest of this experience is burned vividly into my brain, what happened next is all a blur to me. Somehow, before starting the dryer or putting my phone away, I bobbled my phone. And despite spending a large portion of my youth catching baseballs approaching speeds of 90 mph, I dropped it. Unfortunately, my baseball fundamentals decided to kick in at that very moment. Just like coach taught, I kept that bad boy in front of me. It bounced off my hand, into the wall, and slid down behind my washing machine.
My washing machine and the pit of despair.
I quickly donned my headlamp and grabbed my magnetic flashlight. As I peered over the top of the machine I could see my phone leaning up against the wall behind it. Then I stuck the flashlight to the back of the washer because I knew I would need lots of light for what would come next.
My magnetic flashlight.
At this point, I was still optimistic. A little irritated perhaps, but this seemed like it would be a minor inconvenience at most. As you probably have already guessed, I was dead wrong.
The Retrieval
Naturally, my first approach was to reach behind the washer with my hand and just grab the phone. Unfortunately, my arm wouldn’t even reach half way down the side, even with me laying on top of the machine and reaching over the back. In addition to that, the washer and the dryer are nestled into an alcove, making maneuvering around the side impossible.
At this point I had a choice to make. One option was to start moving the machines out of the way. There were a few problems with that approach. These machines are old, heavy, and wedged into that alcove pretty tightly. While I was able to slide the washer forward slightly, moving it enough to reach the phone was another matter entirely. I’m sure it was possible to shuffle these beasts around, but it seemed like a lot of time consuming hard work. I wasn’t too keen on it given that I was all by myself and I have to be a little extra cautious with my bad knee right now. I also didn’t want to risk unhooking any of the pipes.
Option two was to come up with a clever solution to my problem. This seemed like less work. Admittedly, it also seemed like more fun, so that might have influenced my decision making process. I will let you judge if I made the right call.
Idea #1: Slip Knot
My first approach was to fashion together a slip knot with some cordage I had lying around. See the demonstration below:
After following an online tutorial on how to do this, I carefully lowered my slip knot over the back of the washer to my helpless phone languishing in the depths below. It took me awhile to get the cord lined up with my phone because of the labyrinth of pipes and tubes I had to work around. When I finally got the loop up against the edge of the phone I realized I just didn’t have enough leverage to put it exactly where I wanted it. Any time I tried to pull the knot tight the loop popped off the end of the phone. The loop needed to be placed closer to the middle of the phone. What I really needed was another tool to lift the edge of the phone slightly off the ground.
Idea #2: Slip Knot + Tape Measure
The tape measure.
A tape measure seemed like the best tool available to me. It had all the properties I was looking for. It was sturdy, yet flexible enough to work in a confined space, and also had the little metal protrusion at the end which I could wedge underneath my phone. The idea seemed promising in theory. In practice, however, it was less than ideal. I was able to lift up the phone with the end of the tape measure, but I didn’t account for the increased difficulty in lining up the slip knot with one hand while using the other to keep the tape measure steady. Perhaps having another person to help would have made this plan succeed, but with that option off the table, I decided to move on to the next idea.
Idea #3: Slip Knot + Tape Measure + Duct Tape
The Great Equalizer.
Ahhh duct tape. The ideal solution for nothing, but an adequate solution for everything. Surely this potent combination would lead me to the promised land, right? My plan this time was to tape the end of the slip knot to the end of the tape measure like shown in the picture below. This would eliminate my problem of trying to line up both tools with separate hands. Unfortunately, adding the duct tape was a double edged sword. Now the dulled edge of the tape measure couldn’t get underneath the phone anymore.
Slip Knot + Tape Measure Retrieval Device
Admittedly, I was a bit frustrated at this point. In hindsight I could have tried taping the loop in a way so that the metal protrusion of the tape measure was still exposed. I didn’t think of that though. Instead I moved on to my next idea.
The tape measure was out. Those things are already annoying when you use them properly, and I had had enough of its stubborn floppiness. It was time to bring out the big guns.
I grabbed my golf putter, a piece of card board, and some duct tape. Then I went to work. I used the piece of card board and duct tape to create a small platform underneath the head of the putter. Then I put some more duct tape on the bottom of this platform, with the sticky side exposed. The end result was a giant stamp that would hopefully stick to my phone.
Putter Stamp.
It took some deft maneuvering to get the putter all the way to my phone. It was definitely less nimble than the measuring tape when navigating through the pipes, and I paid the price for it. On the way down, I accidentally knocked off the flashlight which I had stuck to the back of the washer. Now I had two items to retrieve. Sitting there awkwardly on top of the washer, I started to question if I had made a grave mistake.
Nevertheless, I persisted.
The putter head was right next to the phone, and I began to experiment. I pressed the duct tape to the surface of the phone, and lifted up. To my great delight, it worked! The duct tape could only maintain its grip on the phone for a moment before letting it drop to the ground, but that was a much better result than I was getting with the tape measure. Time to bring back the slip knot. I carefully lowered it to the ground once again. Working these two tools in tandem I was able to lift the phone and tighten the knot around it. It was only a matter of time now.
Using all the concentration I had, I carefully moved the precariously positioned phone up against the side of the dryer, slid the putter and knot up the wall in unison, and snatched my phone back before it could drop again!
There was much rejoicing (By me, that is. Unfortunately there was no witness for my moment of glory). The flashlight followed soon after using a similar technique, but it was much easier because I was able to use the flashlight’s magnet to stick it back on the dryer again.
Conclusion
I try to wrap up my posts with tidy endings, but I have to admit, I’m having a really hard time coming up with any sort of moral to this story. So I’ll just leave you with a quote from the late great Arnold Palmer that, oddly enough, seems to fit the situation. Although I think he meant it in a different way than I do.
“Putting is like wisdom – partly a natural gift and partly the accumulation of experience.”
Arnold Palmer
As always, if you are enjoying the ideas I’ve presented or you think I’m crazy and want to tell me why I’m wrong, go ahead and subscribe to stay up to date with all the latest content.
