Writings

I’m a fan of the idea behind /now pages, /uses pages, and /hello pages. The basic vision behind each of these is that there’s a place on one’s personal websites where visitors can go to see interesting, noteworthy, and useful things about the site’s owner. So, /now pages are where you can go to see what that person is currently up to. A /hello page is a quick introduction, as well as an explanation of how that person likes to communicate online. And /uses (mostly used by programmers and developers) is where to go to see what kind of technology, hardware, and software that person uses. ...

I want to hear about how you got into “Your Thing”. You know what I mean — the thing that you’re passionate about. Maybe the thing that you’re known for, or just the thing that you care a lot about. It might be something that you consider to be part of your identity… The hobby, or skill, or job, or passion, or style, or drive, or commitment, or affiliation, or whatever “thing” is you. ...

A couple posts back I shared an experiment I was doing with some machine learning models, to make a novel tool for language learning. Specifically, I was interested in creating an Interlinear Audio Bible, where each verse in the Bible is read in two different languages — first in the listeners’ native language, then in the language they’re learning. As I explained in that post, the goal is to give language learners a useful tool for comprehensible input. ...

Yes, it’s much better than the path we’re currently on. Sustaining the current state would definitely be an improvement over reckless, endless extraction and destruction. Parking a car is also an improvement over barreling it off of a cliff. But that’s not the goal. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be. The goal isn’t just sustainability but Regeneration. Not just, “Don’t make it worse”, but actively “Make it better”. ...

If there was a way to use dozens of enterprise-grade cloud software tools (that can each cost hundreds of dollars a month) for free (or nearly free), that would be worth exploring, right? Well, let’s explore it! Every couple years I come to a new appreciation for self-hosted software. For the uninitiated, if you have a spare computer sitting around that you’re willing put to work as a server (or if you want to rent a server for like $5/month), there are literally hundreds of programs available for free that you can host on that server, providing really viable alternatives to commercial cloud tools. ...

I’ve mentioned before that I’m currently working as Localization Director for Waha, which is an app and Bible Study curriculum that we are working towards translating into hundreds of different languages. Many of the languages on our roadmap are low-resource languages, meaning that they have very few materials and tools available to help us and our partners in the translation process. Part of my role as Localization Director involves designing workflows that make the best use of the limited time of our volunteer translators. To that end, I’ve been striving to keep up to date with advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) for low-resource languages, as these tools can be really helpful at easing the labor burden of localization projects, when they’re used effectively. ...

A few years ago, when I wrote a post about the history of Smallpox, I… got a little obsessed. I went DEEP down the rabbit-hole, learning everything I could about how smallpox affected people, families, and civilization. In the event that you and I had any long conversation during that time, I almost definitely spent some of that time talking your ear off about it. (sorry, not sorry) I thought that the story of smallpox and its eradication had to be one of the craziest stories in global medical history. As if no disease in history could have impacted the course of civilization more than smallpox. ...

Do you litter? Probably not. Or, at least, probably not often. Not a lot of people actively try to use the planet as their personal trash can… Yet, often it seems like so many public spaces are a MESS. İt’s interesting to ponder why… İmagine for a moment that 1,000 people walk down a clean street, and just 1 out of 10 of them drop just a single piece of trash onto the street. ...

There exists a well-known relationship between identity and action. So much of how you and I navigate our lives comes back to identity. If, in your internal world, you think of yourself as someone who is passionate about fitness, you will be more likely to get to the gym or go on that run. If you think of yourself as an effective and persistent problem solver, you’ll eagerly jump into creating solutions for hard problems, instead of giving up when they seem too hard. ...

I heard this piece of advice recently: Never let a day pass without doing something that will serve you 10 years from now. I LOVED it! I want to make a habit of that. But, it got me pondering, why stop there? What if we never let a month pass without taking tangible action to make life better for our great grandchildren, 100 years from now? How would your life look different if you were regularly thinking about, and working towards, making the world 100+ years in the future a better place? ...