Writings

I recently joined the executive leadership team at the non-profit Waha, as their Localization Director. I have committed to work with them for the next 3 years with the goal of shipping their app and curriculum in 80+ new languages during that time. This has been a role I’ve been really loving. It has been stretching and demanding in all the ways I love. The role requires a high degree of competence in online-communication, a deep appreciation of nuances in languages and cultures, and a broad understanding of current technologies and how they can be used to help simplify the workflows of our volunteers and partners....

I have been pretty outspoken on my love of RSS as a replacement for social media feeds. It’s a recurring topic on this blog. There have even been a number of people who found my post How to Subscribe to Mailchimp Newsletters With RSS through a random Google search, and later ended up reaching out to me and thanking me for writing it because they found it useful. (If you’re one of those readers, Helloooo!...

I’ve had lots of experiences over the years of looking forward to a new movie or TV show being released. In some cases, that excitement for an upcoming release would last months or years. The year-long wait for Endgame after Infinity War came out comes to mind. Lately, though, I find movies and TV shows to be much less the focus of my anticipation. I can’t currently think of a new movie I’m excited to see when it comes out....

“Imagine what would happen if we had as much courage for peace as we have had for war? What if we had as many monuments and holidays designated for the heroes of peace as we have for the heroes of war? What if we channeled all our incredibly gifted minds to devise ways to de-escalate violence rather than crafting new drones and bombs and guns? What if we were as willing to die for the cross as we have been willing to die for the sword?...

Have you ever logged onto public WiFi, but when you try to open a web page that you already had open, it just won’t load? Sometimes this is because the WiFi is simply not working. In cases like that, it’s probably better to just pull out a book and read, instead of fighting a hopeless battle with bad WiFi. 🙃 Other times, however, the WiFi is actually indeed working, but it’s waiting for you to log in to it....

Today marks 2 years to the day since my dad passed away. Dad was an amazing man, and the last 24 months without him have been more of a challenge than I would have ever expected. Today I wanted to share the eulogy that mom, brother and I wrote in honor of dad after his passing. The recording of Dad’s Memorial Service is below, and the reading of the eulogy starts at timestamp 55:50....

Sometimes it’s easy to fall prey to the dual lies that 1) we’ll have our loved ones in our life more-or-less forever, and 2) that love is something that we can give too much of or run out of. It can be easy to withhold a kind word because we think we might not be creative enough to top it or live up to it later… or we might decide not to give that gift, thinking that maybe it would be better to wait and give it some other time…...

I’m dabbling with an idea, and testing whether it’s a good fit for work and life. Thus far, I’ve been liking the fruit of it. Basically, the idea can be expressed as follows: If I find myself doing the same (or a very similar) task 3 or more times, it’s worth starting to look closely at that task and to figure out a better system for it. After doing a given task a few times, you start to get the hang of it....

I recently published my 100th post on this blog. An exciting milestone! After passing the big 100, I’ve found myself pondering why I’ve been doing this. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the process of blogging. But it is a time consumer. It is effort. That effort made me spend some time thinking about the classic and vital question that should be regularly asked about any endeavor we spend time and effort on: "Who is this for?...

I’ve done my fair share of manually creating subtitles over the years. It can be quite a tedious and time-consuming process, so for a while now I’ve been on the lookout for a way to make that process faster. Over the last few days, I’ve also continued to be playing around with Whisper, which I wrote about before. While playing, I found a workflow that I wish I had had access to years ago....