Jamie Todd Rubin's Blog, page 12
May 7, 2023
My New and Improved (and Automated!) Reading List
Late last year, I set 3 goals for myself for 2023: (1) consolidate the apps that I use; (2) simplify; and (3) automate repetitive tasks.
One repetitive task I’ve been dealing with for decades is maintaining and publishing my reading list. I started keeping my reading list back in 1996 in order to track a goal that I’d set for myself: to read one book per week. Initially, the reading list was in a text file. That was followed by Excel, HTML on an early website, a SQL database, more HTML, a plain text file on GitHub, and most recently, a markdown file that I host through Obsidian Publish.
None of my “routine” tasks have proved more time-consuming than maintaining this list. Frequently, I update in one place, and then have to make similar updates in other places to keep everything in sync. If I could automate this, it would be a huge win. Recently, this is just what I have done.
I created an Excel spreadsheet which is now my canonical master reading list. This is the only place I make updates. I wrote a Wolfram Language script that generates my reading list markdown file as well as a new reading stats page from the spreadsheet. I then simply publish the changes in Obsidian Publish, and presto! A single process for doing it all!
You can see the results on my reading list site. In addition to automatically generating the list, my script also produces the new Reading Stats page, which has all kinds of charts and visualizes of my reading over the decades, with more in the works. I no longer have to do this manually myself, and it has proven a big timesaver already.
To cap things off, I wrote a new About the List page, which gives the history of my reading list and provides an FAQ. Eventually, I’m looking to automate this further by having Wolfram Language detect when my reading list file is updated and automatically produce the updated files, and publish them.
I’m pleased with this new process since it saves measurable amounts of time (considering how much I read and, therefore, how frequently I’m updating my list), which means more time for other things. Like writing more here on the blog.
Written on 6 May 2023.
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May 5, 2023
Where Have I Been?
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" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." decoding="async" width="900" height="600" src="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." alt="close up photo of rolled maps" class="wp-image-23925" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1880w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 400w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 550w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 768w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1800w" sizes="(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" data-recalc-dims="1" />Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.comWhere have I been and why have things been so quiet around here? One of my real joys is writing here and it has been too long since I last took solace in this pleasure of mine. So what’s the deal? Well, I’ve had a lot of things on my plate keeping me busy:
With three kids, one a teenager and one tween and one a first-grader, there comes an endless array of activities. It seems that we are always driving someone somewhere and picking up someone else: school, soccer, gymnastics, girl scouts, birthday parties, play rehearsals, we’ve got it all and it seems to keep us constantly on the move.Work has been busy as my team ramps up for a major software deployment, months in the making. Over time, my role seems to have increased in scope from that of an application developer to include that of a project manager and product managers. All three roles are essentially fulltime jobs and it has been tough keeping up.I’ve been finding time to squeeze in my usual amount of reading, although even here, I’m a little behind the pace I set for myself at the beginning of the year. Part of that is because of all of the above, part of it is because I’ve been reading some really big books. I just finished Les Miserables , which may be the best novel I’ve ever read.I’ve been taking some time to learn new things. I’ve been teaching myself the Wolfram Language, a language which has always fascinated me by its symbolic structure and its breadth of curated content. Through this I’ve also been teaching myself the basics of machine learning and neural nets so that I can better understand how things like ChatGPT really work behind the scenes.I’ve been applying what I’ve learned to a series of automation scripts that I’ve been writing to free myself up of the repetitive, routine tasks that consume non-trial portions of my day.I’ve been attempting to write longer essays, some of which I’ll end up posting here, and some of which I may try submitting to magazines.All of this has left me mentally drained, and with very little time for anything else, including writing here.
But I am trying to change that. I’ve got some posts in progress that should begin to trickle in over the next few days and weeks. The posts covers a variety of subjects, including:
Updates to my reading list (how I automated something I used to spend a lot of time on).An update on my use of Obsidian, Evernote, and the paperless lifestyle.A post or two on some recent reading.I feel guilty for not posting more regularly recently. I’m not yet in a position to say that I’ll be back to a regular schedule soon, but I’m working in that direction.
Written on 5 May 2023
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April 2, 2023
A Ring of Keys
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" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." decoding="async" width="900" height="600" src="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." alt="silver keys in close up photography" class="wp-image-23850" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1880w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 400w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 550w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 768w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1800w" sizes="(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" data-recalc-dims="1" />Photo by Lucas Seebacher on Pexels.comI got my first house key when I was eight or nine years old. It was attached to a string which I wore around my neck, making me one of the many latch-key kids of the early 1980s. I’d walk home the short distance from school, unlock the door with my key, and then call my mom at work to let her know that my brother and I had arrived safely at home. Since then, I’ve never been without a set of keys.
Returning from a morning walk recently, I flipped my key ring around my finger, and noticed how, despite all of the changes over the last four decades, the keys I carry have been ubiquitous and constant. When I got that first key, we did not have cable television and relied on the three major networks for news and entertainment, with the occasional foray into UHF for an old black and white film. When I had that first key, we spoke with local friends on the phone. For more distant friends and family, we sent letters and post cards. Email was far in the future.
Keys have a way of spontaneously multiplying. One key inevitably leads to another and eventually a string around one’s neck is not enough. A key ring is required. I don’t remember the first key ring that I had, or why I needed more than one key. Perhaps it was in junior high school, when I needed a key for a locker in the gym. Perhaps it was when I turned 16 and needed a car key in addition to a house key. Over time, the keys accumulate. We don’t get rid of keys as easily as we gather them and their weight grows heavy in our pockets. Every few years, I’ll sit down to purge the set of keys of ones for which I no longer recall the purpose. Those exiled keys go into a bag in the junk drawer containing a lifetime of cast-offs. Looking at the keys in that bag, I sometimes imagine writing a memoir titled, The Keys to My Life. The cover image would be that freezer bag of keys.
The weight of the key ring attracts other objects. My key ring today contains a fob for one of our cars. Cars, it seems, no longer require keys in the traditional sense, but the fobs weigh more. There is a regular car key for the other car. There are two house keys and a small little key for a locker in my office building which I haven’t used in three years. A Field Notes bottle opened is attached to my key ring, as well as three miniature library cards, one for me and one for each of my daughters.
Kelly’s key ring is different and I can tell from the weight alone whether I’ve picked up the right set in the morning when it is still dark and I’m heading out for my walk.
With all that has changed since I got my first key, I find it comforting that this same mechanical device is still used to secure our cars, our house, our shed. I’ve toyed with the idea of getting an electronic “smart” keypad for the house, but I’ve resisted. A key, like a manual typewriter, is old-school technology, simple, and serving a single purpose. When I use my iPhone for nearly everything but phone calls, it’s nice to know there are still objects I use every day that are simple, noble little inventions that unlock access to the cool air of the house on a hot summer day, or the warmth of the house in the cold of winter.
Written on 2 April 2023.
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March 11, 2023
Books I Read Between 1977-1995
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" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." decoding="async" width="900" height="601" src="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." alt="assorted books on book shelves" class="wp-image-23425" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1880w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 400w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 550w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 768w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1800w" sizes="(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" data-recalc-dims="1" />Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.comAs readers know, I have kept a list of books I have read since 1996. (As of this writing, there are 1,241 books on the list.) Last spring, I tried to estimate how many books I read before I kept my list. I have been thinking about it more and more, and over the last few weeks, have been trying to remember the books I read beginning in kindergarten. As I remembered books, I scribbled them on a few pieces of notebook paper. To make it easier to remember, I divided the list into several sections: grade school, junior high school, high school, college, and 1994-1995.
The result is a list of books I read before 1996, which I have now published online along with my other reading lists. The list is not complete. I’d guess that I was able to recall about half of the books I actually read between 1977 and 1995. Other than being divided into the sections listed above, the books are in order I recalled them when trying to remember what I’d read. A lot of books I read in junior high school and college for classes have faded from my memory. A lot of books I read for fun remained. So while this list is not complete, it is a good representation of my reading in the years before 1996.
As I recall more books, I’ll add them to the list.
Written on 11 March 2023.
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February 26, 2023
Passing Down the Reading List Tradition
I began keeping a list of all of the books I read beginning in 1996. I was almost 24 years old, and I think the inspiration to keep a list came from a list I’d seen online by someone who’d been keeping the list since 1974. I lamented the fact that I’d missed tracking twenty-plus years of books I’d read. Yet when I finally began keeping the list, it was at a time when I decided to try reading a book a week. My list, I figured, would grow quickly. My list has taken various forms online over the years, but my “master” list is contained in a Leuchtturm1917 notebook where, at the moment, the 1,240 books I’ve read take up almost all of the first 60 pages.
Over the weekend, the Littlest Miss discovered a stack of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books on my bookshelf. She is 6-1/2, a very good reader, and she asked me about those books. I explained the concept of them to her, and she seemed excited by it. So much so, that she sat down Friday evening and read through one of them. Now, “reading through” a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book is not a linear process, but she seemed to attempt every possible permutation. She did it in a logic way, too. She told me that when she went back to the beginning, she’d skipped the parts she already read, and only read the new parts.
She finished the book that very evening. When she finished, she came up to me and asked if we could start her own list of books. I’d set aside a fresh Leuchtturm1917 notebook for this very purpose. We opened the wrapping on it together, and I explained to her my simple rules for keeping my list:
Only books I finish go on the list. I don’t track books I don’t finish. Too much work.Each finished book gets a number.If I re-read a book, and finish it again, it goes on the list again with another number, but I also indicate it is a re-read with a ^ after the title.Paper, e-books, and audiobooks all count, so long as I finish them.Together, we got her notebook setup. I told her that since it was her notebook and her list, she had to complete the list herself. She wrote the title on the cover (you can see it in the photo above). And then, on the first page of the book, she made her first entry. You can see both of our “first pages” in the image below.
Over the weekend, the Littlest Miss completed 2 more Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books and her list has grown by two additional entries.
I’m envious. If she can keep her list going, not only will she have a more extensive list than I ever had, but her list will reflect the evolution of her thinking and interests from an early age. It will mirror the evolution (and improvement) in her handwriting. And, much as my book list goes, it will act as a kind of memoir of her life. Through some quirk of memory, when I glance through my list, I can remember exactly where I was when I read a particular book on the list, even if I don’t remember the book all that well.
It’s been a delight to see how excited the Littlest Miss was by the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, and also how excited she was to begin keeping her own list. I’ve already told her that she can use my list any time she wants if she is looking for ideas or recommendations. (All books that I’d recommend are indicated by a * in the margin of the page.) It is a journey we are now taking together.
Written on 26 February 2023.
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February 14, 2023
Heavy Reading
If I haven’t been writing here much it is because I’ve been doing a lot of heavy reading lately. I’ve been reading a lot about artificial intelligence lately, and that led to math and physics. In there were a couple of good biographies: The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and Times of Enrico Fermi, Father of the Nuclear Age by David N. Schwartz and The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac to name just a few. I’ve also been making my way through Richard Rhodes’ Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb.
These books have led to others: Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe by Steven Strogatz to refresh myself on calculus. And also a biography of Kurt Gödel, Journey to the Edge of Reason by Stephen Budianski. These books lead to other books, and some of the reading that I have on tap includes two books by Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind and The Road to Reality, the latter of which is something like a magnum opus.
And then, there’s history. Last summer we did our first trip overseas family trip to Ireland. This summer, we’re returning to Europe, this time to Italy, Switzerland and France. I’ve been to Italy before, but not to Switzerland or France. Knowing we’re going to Italy has been wanting to revisit Italian history before we got. I thought I’d reread Will Durant’s The Renaissance. And then, I realized that since I love Durant’s writing style so much, why not take the opportunity to go back and read the first five books of his Story of Civilization. So that is on-deck as well. And since I’m rereading things, why not also add Walter Isaacson’s Leonardo da Vinci in the mix.
Between all of this heavy reading, I need to lighten the load. I re-read an old Jack McDevitt novel, The Engines of God and am looking forward to reading his latest Alex Benedict novel, Village in the Sky. As I make my way through Dark Sun, I’ve been surprised by how the first part of the book focuses on Russian espionage into the Manhattan project. It made me crave spy stories, and so 23 years after I first read them, I’m re-reading some of the Jack Ryan novels, in particular the heavy ones: Debt of Honor, Executive Orders, and The Bear and the Dragon.
I generally set a goal of 100 books per year, and I’m well off-pace so far this year, but the books I have been reading lately have been heavy in mass as well as subject. (Executive Orders is over 1,300 pages; Age of Faith by Will Durant is about the same.) The volume of my reading lately is as much as ever.
And this probably explains, at least in part, why I’ve been absent here. I’ll try to do better, but I’ve got a lot of reading to do before our trip this summer.
If you are interested in what I’m reading, or what I’ve read already, you can always check out what I’m reading now, and what I’ve read since 1996.
Written on Valentine’s Day, 2023.
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January 21, 2023
14 Years on WordPress
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" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." decoding="async" width="900" height="600" src="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." alt="close up shot of a typewriter" class="wp-image-20215" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1880w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 400w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 550w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 768w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1800w" sizes="(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" data-recalc-dims="1" />Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.comRecently, I was notified that I passed my 14th anniversary on WordPress, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to give WordPress a plug here.
I switched to WordPress sometime in late 2008 or early 2009 (I can’t recall exactly at the moment, and I’m in a rush so I’m not going to look it up). This means that my use of WordPress pre-dates the birth of all my kids, the oldest of which will be 14 later this year.
I also believe that WordPress is the longest running software and service that I have consistently used. I’ve been using it for 14+ years. This blog is more than 17 years old. Prior to WordPress, the blog was hosted on LiveJournal (remember that!) and I like WordPress much more. My use of WordPress has outlasted just about every other service I’ve used (save, perhaps Gmail). I was using WordPress when I discovered Evernote, and I was still using WordPress when I finally gave up Evernote last year.
For the first 12 years that I used WordPress, I used a self-installed version of WordPress. But after a dozen years of doing it all myself, I decided to migrate from my self-installed instance to WordPress.com’s hosting service. It was a very good migration and everything about my experience with WordPress has improved since I began using their full-service hosting. (For the record, I use their Business Plan.)
All of this should be a testament to how useful their service has been for me over the years. Moreover, on the very rare instances that I’ve had an issue, their technical support has jumped (sometimes before I even knew there was an issue) to fix the problem quickly. WordPress has been just about the most functionally useful and reliable service that I use on a regular basis, and I heartily recommend the service for anyone looking to host a blog.
(P.S.: In case you are wondering, no one asked me to write this post. I am in no way compensated by WordPress. I wrote it, as I’ve written previous versions, because I use WordPress regularly and I really do think it is an outstanding service.)
Written on 17 January 2023.
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January 15, 2023
Winter Cleaning
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" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." decoding="async" width="900" height="506" src="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." alt="black classic car inside the garage" class="wp-image-23643" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1880w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 400w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 550w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 768w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1800w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1840w" sizes="(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" data-recalc-dims="1" />Photo by Mike B on Pexels.comWhile on winter break I decided to tackle some winter cleaning that I’ve put off for years. I decided to clean up my files and data and organize them into something more useful. This was part of the personal automation effort that I mentioned in my goals for 2023.
I have files that go back to my college days. Looking at my data, I see that the oldest document file I have in my archives goes back to March 10, 1993, when I was junior in college. The data that I have spans just about 30 years. And it was something of a mess.
In order to avoid organizing things, I created “temp” folders to store old stuff. Within those temp folders, I also had “bak” folder with still older stuff. Sometimes, I had multiple copies of these things spread across various parts of my filesystem. Over the break, I decided it was finally time to clean this all up.
A profusion of storage optionsTo clean things up, I first needed to figure out where to put things. Over the years, I’ve built up a profusion of storage options. Locally, I’ve got a laptop, a Mac Mini and my iPhone. The Mac Mini hosts 2 external disks with 6 TB of storage capacity.
I have an iCloud account with 2 TB of storage. I have Dropbox subscription giving me an additional 2 TB of storage. I have a Office 365 account for the family which gives me somewhere around 5 TB of storage. And I have a Google account with Google Drive and some amount of storage there. And I had files scattered about all of these data sources.
Simplifying my file systemI decided to start by simplifying my file system. I’ve had interesting arc over the years. For a long time, was a strong proponent of cloud storage for the obvious benefits of accessibility. But time and experience has taught me that local access with sufficient backup is most desirable for me, as you never know when a service might go away or be priced out of reach. Also, it’s nice to have everything centralized in one place so that I don’t have to remember which data I store where.
I decided, therefore, that the primary source for my data would be local and that I’d use cloud services as a mechanism for making the data accessible between systems, but not as primary storage.
I decided that there are really three types of data that I work with on a regular basis:
Working documents (source code, spreadsheets, etc.)Notes (Obsidian, all of my writing, daily notes, diaries, etc.)Archive (all of my data that in not “active” in the sense that I don’t work with it regularly, but is of great historical value to me)Working documentsI decided that my working documents would be stored on my local machine, in my Documents folder, and that folder is part of my iCloud Drive, so that whatever is stored there is synchronized with other devices that I use.
Given that one of my goals is to see if I can pare down the tools I use to the smallest possible set1, I found that I was able to consolidate my Documents folder down to just three top-level folder:
The Repos folder contains code repositories for projects I am actively working on–the key word being “actively.”
The Settings folder is where I store various configuration settings, templates, custom fonts I use, and various branding artifacts like profile photos, etc.
Finally, the Wolfram Mathematica folder contains Wolfram Language notebooks I am actively working on. This folder may go away, however. I found that if I enable the “Detect All File Extension” option in Obsidian, I can store my notebooks there, link to the notebooks from other notes, and open the notebooks directly from the links, which is far more useful to me.
For working documents, this is pretty much all I have.
Notes and writingAll of my notes and writing are stored in Obsidian. These days, this is where the vast majority of my daily output goes. I use the Obsidian Sync service to sync my notes between devices. I’ve found the services to be virtually flawless, fast, and extremely reliable. I’ve currently got about 4,000 notes in my Obsidian vault and Obsidian Sync has been perfect in keeping my devices up-to-date. It works so well, that I basically forget it is even running.
I don’t keep my Obsidian vaults on iCloud. There have been issues with vault synchronization when vaults are stored in cloud services like iCloud or Dropbox, and it can occasionally lead to some odd behavior when those services sync files. Instead, I have a separate Vaults folder on my local machine that is not part of a cloud sync service–except for Obsidian Sync–and all of my vaults are stored within that folder.
ArchiveAs I mentioned, I have files going back 30 years. The most time-consuming part of my winter cleaning was cleaning and organizing that archive, eliminating duplicates, moving things into the archive that belong there and getting rid of things that don’t.
There are really two parts to my archive: Data and Installers. The data portion of my archive is about 15 GB and contains all of the files I’ve worked on over the last 30 years or so. The Installers is much newer than that. Generally, I try to keep copies of older version of software installers whenever I get a new version, so that if I ever run into compatibility issues, I can go back to an older version of a piece of software. This makes up about 8 GB of my archive, so that the total archive currently stands at about 24 GB.
It is important to mention what is not in the archive. Photos and videos I store in Apple Photo which is part of iCloud. I don’t have the time or patience to go through the 30,000 photos and videos I’ve accumulated over the years and pare them down, so I just leave them alone.
I debated where to store my archive. Should I include it iCloud so that it is accessible from all my devices? Or should I keep in one location? After considerable thought, I decided on the latter. My archive is stored on external 3 TB drive connected to my Mac Mini. This drive, along with my Mac Mini, and indeed, all of our household computers, is backed up using CrashPlan, so that if something where to happen to the drive, I wouldn’t lose any data. (There are additional redundancies in place for the archive, but that is a topic for a separate post.) Given that I don’t access the archive regularly, it didn’t seem necessary to keep it in an active cloud service.
Next, I had to figure out how to organize the archive. Over the years, I’ve played around with all kinds of organizational structures, including, most recently, PARA, or even no organization and relying on search functionality to find what I am looking for. But I decided to go old-school and use a more traditional, hierarchical structure to organize the archive instead. The reason is that more and more, I think about how my family would access this data if I wasn’t around. Structures like PARA or arbitrary searches might not work for them. A more obvious hierarchy of topics would be more useful.
Ultimately, I ended up with the following structure:
I tend to sort things from most recently to least recently modified, which explains the order in which the folders appear. The “Photos” folder is not my Apple photos, but rather curated photos that I’ve specifically moved into the archive. Many of these folders contains sub-folders. Here, for instance, is what it looks like inside my Writing folder:
The archive contains all of my personal and work email. I tend to perform these archival functions annually and then zip up the resulting email archives for storage. The earliest email message I have in my archive dates to October 17, 1994.
The archive also contains big social media archives. For instance, when I stopped using Evernote in favor of Obsidian, I did an expert of all of my Evernote data to an archive. Similarly, when I stopped using Facebook, I archived all of my Facebook data. And when things were looking iffy with Twitter, I grabbed an archive of my Twitter data as well. These are all within the Cloud Services section of my archive.
I rely heavily on the file meta-data for finding what I am looking for, particularly filename, modification and creation dates. It is helpful that I’ve kept the original files in many cases because it makes it easier to search the archive in a given timeframe. As I mentioned, some of my files go back as far as 30 years. Here is an example of a few of my files from 30 years ago:
Cleaning up cloud servicesIn centralizing my files locally, I also took the opportunity to clean up what I had on the various cloud services I use. I had a lot of random stuff on Dropbox that I moved to my archive because I rarely access it these days. Instead, I now use Dropbox as a convenient way to share files, and for some application settings where the application prefers Dropbox over other services for its settings. Also, Dropbox is where my writer’s group stores its stuff, so it is convenient to keep it around. But what I have there is mostly ephemeral now.
We have a family OneDrive from Office 365 and there are a few files I’ve stored there for convenience, but I rarely use Office tools these days outside of work. I moved much of the writing-related documents I had in OneDrive to my archive. What is left there is a few things that are shared between family members.
Still to-doFor several years, between 2013-2016, I used Google Drive almost exclusively for my writing. This is one place that I have yet to tackle cleanup. It is a mess and I imagine it will be a challenge to get it all cleaned up. It should be made easier by the fact that much of what I wrote there should already be in my archive. But it will take time, and I may end up putting off this task until next winter. One indicator of whether I need something is how frequently I access it, and I haven’t needed to access my files in Google Drive in a long time.
BackupsI’ve had a robust strategy for backing up my data, and indeed, all of my family’s data for a long time now. But as it is somewhat off-topic for this post, I’ll save the details of the backup strategy for later.
A feeling of reliefIt is amazing what a winter cleaning like this does for the soul. When i completed it, when I had everything setup the way I wanted it, a feeling of relief washed over me. It was a similar feeling to looking over a freshly mown lawn, or a recently cleaned desk surface. Everything was in its place, and everything had a place to go. It’s nice to know that when I create something, there is a clear and obvious place to put it.
It was also a relief to know that I’d finally organized my archive and eliminated all of the duplicate files there.
I am now working on a README file with a target audience of my family that should make it quick and easy for them to find something in the archive in my absence.
Written on 15 January 2023.
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I mentioned two tools in my Goals post, Obsidian and Mathematica/Wolfram Language ↩January 4, 2023
A Quick Check-In
I am on vacation with the family, but I wanted to check-in quickly to let you know that posting should resume here as planned once I am back from vacation. Next week I’ll have a post on some of my early progress on the automation I talked about in my goals post. This one will also include some experimenting with ChatGPT that I’ve done along the way. I’ll also have a post on our vacation, as well as the usual things you’ve come expect here. I’m also working on an essay or two, which I talked about in The Essayist. In the meantime, if you are looking for something to read, check out my best reads from 2022, or some of the best things I read online in 2022.
Meanwhile, I am enjoying vacation with the family. The weather has been fantastic and we are all having a blast. It is a break that we all needed. I can always tell when I am enjoying a vacation when I forget what day of the week it is–when everyday feels like a weekend. I had to check just now to see that it was Wednesday.
Happy Wednesday, everyone! And if I haven’t already said so, Happy New Year!
Written on 4 January 2023.
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January 1, 2023
My Best Reads of 2022
Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com
" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." decoding="async" width="900" height="601" src="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c..." alt="assorted books on book shelves" class="wp-image-23425" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1880w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 400w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 550w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 768w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/jamierubin.net/wp-c... 1800w" sizes="(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" data-recalc-dims="1" />Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.comWith 2022 now behind us, I can safely post my list of 10 best reads of the year, without excluding any potential late-comers. This is actually the second draft of this post. The first draft came in at something over 2,500 words, and as I read it, I thought: No one wants to read this much other stuff. They just want the list. To that end, I’ve tried to cut this significantly.
Summary of my reading in 2022I read 101 books in 2022, finally meeting my goal of 100 books again, after two consecutive years of falling short. 65 of the 101 books were nonfiction. I was surprised by this because my tendency these last few years has been heavily toward nonfiction. But I reread some old fiction series I’ve enjoyed in the past and that shifted the balance somewhat.
My 10 best reads of 2022A few notes before I get to the list:
These are the ten books I most enjoyed reading in 2022; they are not the the ten best books that debuted in 2022. The books on the list were published over a wide range of years, the earliest being 1970 with only 2 of the books on the list debuting in 2022.In past years, I’ve listed the books as a countdown from 10 to 1. It seems to me this buries the lead and is an injustice to the books that I most enjoyed. This year, I’m listing them from my 1 to 10, and damn the suspense.Here, then, are my best reads of 2022:
1. A Place to Read: Life and Books by Michael Cohen (2014)
This collection of essays by a former professor resonated strongly with me: the subjects, the style, the fact that we were both pilots. The book was an accidental discovery, a rare success for Amazon’s recommendation system. It is one of several books this year that convinced me that I want to be an essayist. It was my favorite read of 2022.
2. Destiny of the Republic: A tale of madness, medicine and the murder of a president by Candice Millard (2011)
I took a big lesson from Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic: that anyone rising to a position like that of President of the United States is worth reading about, even if they are not as well known (to me), anyway). James Garfield’s story was gripping, and Millard’s telling of it was wonderful, fascinating, and ultimately heartbreaking.
3. This Living Hand: Essays, 1972-2012 by Edmund Morris (2012)
The essays in This Living Hand run the gamut of subjects, from biographical to autobiographical, big subjects and themes to small ones, like the value of handwriting, and what one can learn from it. I’d had mixed experiences with Edmund Morris in the past, greatly enjoying his 3-volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and perplexed by his unorthodox biography of Thomas Edison. But This Living Hand was a treasure to read, and another push toward wanting to write essays.
4. Hell and Back by Craig Johnson (2022)
Hell and Back, the most recent installment in the Walt Longmire series (my favorite fiction series) supplanted the 7th book in the series, Hell is Empty as my favorite Longmire book. This is a different Longmire story, in tone as well as in the way it is told.
5. The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya (2022)
John von Neumann has come up frequently in my reading and from those incidental glances, I had the idea that he was a smart person even among smart people. I was delighted to find and read this new biography of von Neumann, The Man from the Future, and it convinced me that he was very likely the smartest person I have ever read about.
6. Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace (2005)
I’ve had Infinite Jest on my bookshelf for years, tempting me. Since I’d been reading a lot of essay collections this year, I thought I’d read some of Wallace’s essays first, and the first collection I read was Consider the Lobster and Other Essays. I was blown away by his writing, and came away awe-struck, and somewhat depressed. I don’t think I could ever write essays as well as Wallace did.
7. Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality by Max Tegmark (2014)
I came to Max Tegmark’s Our Mathematical Universe via James Gleick’s Chaos. I was immediately impressed by the scope, style, humor, and imagination that Tegmark put into the book. It was one of those reads that made me want to follow up with more, and I read his book, Life 3.0 as soon as I finished this one.
8. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 4 by Robert A. Caro (2012)
The 4th volume of Robert A. Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power turned out to be my favorite so far. The arc of Johnson’s career and his thrust into the presidency after the Kennedy assassination is a great illustration of how unique the job is, and how no career, no matter how stories, can really prepare someone for it.
9. The Rising Sun: The Decline & Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-45 by John Toland (1970)
I’ve read a lot of the history of the Second World War, but I’d never read a history that focuses primarily on Japan. This is exactly what The Rising Sun by John Toland does. There were five themes that I found particularly interesting in this book.
10. The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell (2018)
Now and then I imagine what it might be like to own a used bookstore. After reading The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell, I no longer have to imagine. This is a charming book about the owner of the largest used bookstore in Scotland, who has kept a diary about the day-to-day running of the shop. I enjoyed it so much that I followed it up with its sequel.
Honorable mentionsIn addition to these best reads of the year, here are some other books I read this year worthy of mention:
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer. A masterpiece. Like many long histories, reading it made me want to know more about its author, and I followed it up with Shirer’s 3-volume autobiography.The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity by Steven H. Strogatz. Every now and then, I enjoy a good book on mathematics.Philosophy of Sailing: Offshore in Search of the Universe by Christian Williams. This was a wonderful read about a fellow who made a solo sailing journey from southern California to Hawaii and back.The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit by Ron Shelton. If you like baseball and movie-making, this one is for you.A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books by Nicholas A. Basbanes. An absorbing book on the fascinating world of book collecting.River of Gods: Genius, Courage, Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard. A biography of Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke and the discovery of the source of the Nile river. It was this book that led me to Destiny of the Republic.The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler by David L. Roll. I’m fascinated by the “people behind the people,” and David Roll’s biography is of just such a person, Harry Hopkins.Remarkable Diaries: The World’s Greatest Diaries, Notebooks, and Letters Explored and Explained by DK Publishing. This was a fun book to flip through slowly before I went to sleep at nightMadly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman by Alan Rickman. One of my guilty pleasures is reading memoirs by or about entertainers. This one was unique in that it was the private diaries of Rickman, published posthumously.DisneyWar by James B. Stewart. A fascinating inside look at the Walt Disney Company during the rise and fall of Michael Eisner.I am aiming to read at least 100 books in 2023. It is always exciting to start out the year and wonder what will the best reads end up being? I’ll let you know a year from now. In the meantime, if you are interested here, are some past lists:
My best reads of 2021My best reads of 2020My best reads of 2019My best reads of 2018Written 26-31 December 2022.
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