Thoughts to Ponder

Loved these thoughts from the outgoing Chief Data Scientist of the White House:

  • Dream in years
  • Plan in months
  • Evaluate in weeks
  • Ship daily
  • Prototype for 1x
  • Builder for 10x
  • Engineer for 100x
  • What’s required to cut the timeline in 1/2?
  • What’s required to double the impact?

h/t ma.tt

New Year, New Theme

To ring in 2019, I’m changing this blog’s theme to Twenty Nineteen, the new default WordPress theme, designed and primarily created by my excellent colleague, Allan Cole (check out his music, published as The Stuyvesants, they’re groovy).

Apart from being pretty similar to, but a nice upgrade from the previous theme here, Twenty Nineteen also harnesses the full power of Gutenberg, the new WordPress Block Editor. I’m going to convert some posts to blocks so that I can use some of the better gallery options and whatnot, and will be using Gutenberg for everything going forward. It also reminds me a bit of the styling used throughout Instapaper, which I’ve spent a lot of time in lately 🙂

Happy New Year!

Honeymoon in Japan

After our wedding, and cleaning everything up, we had just another day or two at home before heading off on our honeymoon. We decided to go to Japan, since neither of us had ever been there, and we both really wanted to go. It was a really amazing trip, even though it was brutally hot and humid at the time of year we went. We managed to do most of it on award points/miles as well, so that made it all even sweeter 🙂

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Loosely Joined

I had to chuckle recently when I realized just how complex some of the systems in my life are, even if I rarely think about the details.

  1. Most nights, I weigh myself on a Withings wifi scale (an older version).
  2. That data syncs over Google Wifi, via a Comcast Xfinity connection, to the Nokia/Withings Health Mate service.
  3. Then MyFitnessPal automatically syncs the data from Health Mate, and keeps a copy,
  4. before Garmin Connect also syncs a copy to integrate back with other data (like heart rate and activities) .
  5. If I’ve been doing specific activities, then some of the data from Garmin Connect (although not that weight info) will also sync out to Strava and create activity records.

The last step remaining is that I want to hook up my copy of WordPress to sync all of the data back so that I have a copy under my direct control.

Fjällräven Classic USA, 2018

This year, for the third year in a row, I participated in the Fjällräven Classic USA here in Colorado. Read about the 2016 USA Fjällräven Classic and the 2017 USA Fjällräven Classic.

As with previous years, this was a 3 day, 2 night backpacking trip in the Colorado backcountry, hosted by Fjällräven and their sister brands. This year felt like they are really hitting their groove with organization, distance, and difficulty, and I think it was overall the “best” one yet.

Erika came along this year as well, and we did a lot fewer training hikes because we knew the course was significantly shorter, had both been really active all year, and were generally just pretty confident. We were also busy getting organized to get married (which happened the week after the Classic!), and I was breaking in a new mountain bike, so we had some other things on our schedules 🙂 Nonetheless, we got in a few training hikes (or rides) at Table Mountain and Aldefer/Three Sisters.

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Specialized Enduro 29″

I bought a bike!

Back in Australia, back in the day, I had a Specialized P3 which I used for some downhill riding. I sold that eventually in San Francisco, after years of not really using it (it’s not a practical city-bike, and I didn’t have easy access to get out and mountain bike with it). When I moved to New York I bought a Cannondale Bad Boy 9, which was a much better choice for in the city. Fast forward a few years, and living in Denver means I’m close to mountains and a bunch of world-class downhill riding. In 2016 I picked up a Motobecane Boris X9 fatbike, which was fun, but pretty impractical.

Ever since getting the Boris, I’ve been itching to get a “real” bike and get back out there. With a fat tax return coming my way, I was feeling cashed up and spendy, so last weekend I jumped on Craigslist (again), and found myself a sweet bike. I managed to get around and see it the next day, and bought it on the spot.

The bike is a Specialized Enduro Comp29/6 Fattie, with a bunch of modifications. I bought it from a guy who works in a bike shop, so he’d built it up, but never actually ridden it on a trail, so it’s brand new. Here’s an attempt at a breakdown of the modifications.

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Backpack Review: Arc’teryx Brize 25L vs Patagonia Nine Trails 28L

Looking for a simple daypack for quick adventures? Me too. I’ve been using a Geigerrig Rig 1210 (looks something like this one) for a while, but found it to be a little too small, awkwardly configured, and generally just not really what I wanted. After weighing some options, I ended up with a decision between 2 packs: the Arc’teryx Brize 25, and the Patagonia Nine Trails 28L.

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YouTube Service for Keyring

In 7072886 I added a first swing at a YouTube Service definition to Keyring. It’s based heavily on the Google Analytics one that was recently submitted via PR. It’s not part of an official release yet. I’m curious about enabling people to import the videos they publish on YouTube into a WordPress install though, as that feels like something that folks who use it heavily would want as part of their web presence.

Next step will be adding an importer for YouTube, which I'll probably aim to do over the coming weeks.

Keyring v1.9

I just released version 1.9 of the Keyring plugin for WordPress.

keyring-1.9

This version includes a few pretty cool updates and additions, as described in the changelog:

  • Added a Google Analytics Service definition.
  • Added a Strava Service definition.
  • Added a “Settings” link to the plugin listing if you’re using the bundled Admin UI.
  • Fitbit tokens now refresh properly.
  • Tumblr now requires HTTPS, so updated all request URLs to use HTTPS.

My favorite part of this release is that I didn’t personally do most of the things in there. Two of my colleagues did some of it (Strava service and Tumblr fixes), while a generous and otherwise unknown contributor on Github added the Google Analytics service.

This is open source, working!