Moved over from Nikola, to Hugo today. In two minds about what to do with all the old posts. Do I just shed them all, like I’ve done in the past? Or work to move them over? Maybe, tomorrow’ll bring clarity. In the meanwhile, this is a house under construction, y’all! Stuff does not work, stuff looks wonky, and stuff both, looks wonky and doesn’t work. I’ll be at it, on and off, over the next few weeks, trying to make this home....
This post was first sent to my newsletter on November 20th, 2021. You really ought to subscribe :) Ok, I’m a day late, but hopefully not a dollar short1 :) This work letter is going out to all of you my friends, because there’s not much technical stuff in here. And because I have a spot of good news to share. I got a jobby job! I’ve been trying the past few years, to switch my career to something that wasn’t as taxing, as consulting on hardware and networks and integrating systems....
This post was first sent to my newsletter on November 7th, 2021. You really ought to subscribe :) A few days late, but Happy Diwali, folks! :) A small ask of you, to begin with. Like I wrote in the past, I don’t have any sort of tracking in these mails. There are no ads, nothing to push. Just a labour of love. So I have no idea whether these posts resonate or I’m just howling into the storm that is your inbox....
This was so much fun! If I had teachers or mentors like Kip Thorne in my youth, I’d have never had such a crippling fear of mathematics or the hard sciences. I’d have never plagued by doubt and fear, that I was not smart enough or good enough. I have just one note to share. This is Kip as he closes the book … Every time I watch Interstellar and browse back through this book, I’m amazed at the enormous variety of science they contain....
Just finished John McPhee’s, Draft No. 4. I could pithily summarise it as … Practice a lot of things. Work at finding your thing. Practice you thing (lots! deeply! a fuckton.) Work within established rules. Bend the rules to fit your thing. Break the rules once you know your thing deeply! McPhee writes about the craft of writing. But the advice could apply broadly to any creative endeavour. This series of essays and lessons and backstory was also hugely confirming to me....
This post was first sent to my newsletter on March 19th, 2021. You really ought to subscribe :) I blame Mahe for this post. Hey, Jason! Can you please write an article on how to build a website like yours, where I can post my blogs? Check out her blogs, here and here. This one is squarely aimed at all the young ones, who are convinced that they need to be writing....
*Image, courtesy [Tom Gauld][tgt]* This post was first sent to my newsletter on February 1st, 2021. You really ought to subscribe :) Welcome to the first, “serious” newsletter of 2021. This was supposed to be my year end post, but life, as usual got in the way. Now that I’ve jammed both the blogs together, most of the personal stuff is going to stay focussed on stuff about books and reading and writing and a few photos thrown in once in a while for good measure....
I have been telling the young ones, that reading the things they consider important, needs to be engaged. Engaged with the words. Engaged with the flow. With the author. Her ideas. The way she makes her case. Or tells her story. To wrestle with what is being said, or left unsaid. To build a mental model with the ideas being presented. To write it all down. To wrestle with the work and draw your own conclusions....
My email program, was somehow hacked into last week, and close to 3000 spam mails were sent out in the course of a few minutes. While I was able to serendipitously catch it as soon as it happened, I apologise if you were the recepient of unsavoury stuff from my email address. I am now in the process of rebuilding everything. letter at janusworx dot com is the new home from where these letters will be sent from....
Ryan Holiday, writes about a question, he purports will change your reading life. And this was somehow surprising to me, because as a bookworm, I have been slipping this question (or a variant of it) into casual conversations with folks all my life. If I need my reading queue to be always full, I need to always be closing :) And since it has helped me so much, it’s only fair, I share it with you :)...