our man in lagos
I am not going to explain it. Explaining it would make it sound like an epiphany, and it was no thunderclap, it was a slowing. The traffic was not moving and I stopped wanting it to move. […]
personal
meeting your heroes
The first thing I noticed was the money. […]
a paean to a series of paeans
Every fourteenth of February, something arrived. […]
hr-approved
Delivered casually over the lip of a glass of pinot noir, fittingly known as the Iron Fist in the Velvet Glove. […]
brown is actually the best color skin daddy says
There was a piece on NPR about how children pattern from their parents' examples in the absence of frank, uncomfortable conversations about race, the implication being that if you perform the right values loudly enough, the kid absorbs them by osmosis. So I asked her. […]
as a father to a daughter
As a father to a daughter, I loathe the phrase "as a father to a daughter." […]
the 880
There's a particular shudder that comes with "The Nimitz," nothing to do with the Admiral, everything to do with knowing exactly which stretch of concrete it names and what it means to be on it at 5pm on a Friday. If you felt that shudder just now, you and I are probably from the same place. The Town. Oaktown […]
how helicopters work
So. Helicopters. The main rotor generates lift by spinning aerofoils through the air, creating a pressure differential between the upper and lower surfaces. The tilted rotor allows vectoring of lift for forward flight, and the tail rotor counteracts torque to prevent fuselage rotation. Collective pitch controls altitude while cyclic pitch controls attitude. ... and she […]
long road from hollister
The Hollister logo was emblazoned across the chest of a guy sitting on a rock in the middle of the end of a dirt road. It took us 4 hours by 4x4 to find the one (in)voluntary toll road. The toll gate was really his rock, in the middle of a deer […]
couples therapy chat
As part of a more general initiative to take ownership of my data by hosting it myself, I cobbled together a chat app. My target audience is limited to me and my wife mostly discussing logistics. A fancy way of saying we needed a better way to coordinate grocery lists and who […]
J.A.Y.N.E
Jayne was an automated yelling and nagging entity. She was my early attempt at a whole house AI before that was a thing. She was definitely artificial but not particularly intelligent. She ruled our house from my daughter’s kindergarten until third grade. What follows are a few observations about the experience. Before her retirement Jayne […]
fitness tracker chore dump
We started a family step count game. The idea is simple: whoever wins the daily step count gets bragging rights. We keep a running tally of weekly victories. The weekly winner gets to assign the weekly loser a chore of their choice. I kitted each of us out with a Xiaomi Mi Fit 2. At […]