Recently

It only looks like I didn’t write anything in October. I actually wrote five blog posts, but over on the Placemark blog!

• Choosing atoms
• Charting Placemark’s development with InfluxDB
• Engineering round-up
• Good magic with TypeScript
• Escaping engineering FOMO

Look at all that content! Oh boy, oh boy.

Brooklyn is easing into the fall. I missed weather, being out on the west coast for a few years. I missed a lot of things about the east coast. Though I do miss San Francisco’s wide sidewalks and scenic running routes.

Watching

I’m watching Ballers, okay? Not Succession, not Squid Game. Ballers. It’s a show about Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Rob Corddry sort of working as money managers for sports stars, but there isn’t any money management or sports in the show. The show jumps the shark early and often, throwing new plots and cultural elements onto the heap in a sort of anti-auteur mishmash.

I’m still really enjoying Carlos Maza’s series of videos about politics. Seems like a really cool guy.

Listening

Polyphia is sort of further on the “prog” side of the prog/math continuum than I’ve gone before, but it’s really enjoyable stuff.

It’s especially neat when frontman Henson makes videos about how he wrote the song, and then videos about fan covers of those songs, and sells intricate tabs for guitarists. It’s an entertaining interplay between wildly difficult, impressive arrangements right next to a pretty open, humble, encouraging vibe. The future of guitar gods is looking pretty chill.

Reading

I read three books in October, which are over on the reading tab. Life According to Garp was the hit. I’m in the middle of reading Triumph of Injustice right now, and it’s wonderful - already highly recommended.

Big month for Darrell Owens - a profile in the Atlantic and some great writing on his Substack - Eliminate Cars and Traffic Cops or Keep Cars and Traffic Cops but not both and The History of Gentrification in Berkeley: Part I. I’m still waiting for an all-encompassing theory that ties together the risks & tradeoffs of automated traffic enforcement with those of non-automated traffic enforcement - some combination of the Rebecca Williams viewpoint, the New York Times reporting on traffic stops, and Owens’s thinking.

Playing

New section? Probably not, but I snagged an XBox S, and have been playing Control and Sable. Both great. And still playing plenty of chess - on my way up to 1500 in the Rapid scores and hit 1510 in Blitz, and now I’m scared to play Blitz because surely that rating can only go down.