Rob Knight

Weeknotes 04

2020-05-23T08:05:50-07:00

If you are prone to overestimate your ability to eat leafy greens, like I am, the NY Times has you covered with storage tips.
I know the internet is filled with anger and noise, but this is a huge moment for science. Frontline medical staff, researchers, and public health professionals are on the job, and sharing their work. Bloomberg contributor Noah Smith regularly collects and shares interesting COVID-19 information on Twitter. It is a welcome break from the usual conflict-driven news cycle.
Speaking of Twitter, a few more smart people to follow on Twitter for helpful thoughts on COVID-19 science (no surprise they are both mentioned in Noah Smith’s list):
- Bob Wachter from UCSF
- Andy Slavitt
This episode of 20,000 Hertz about the sound design for Star Wars is possibly my favorite episode of any podcast, ever. All of the sounds you love are deconstructed, and we get to learn their origin stories. My takeaway is that you can’t go wrong if you combine the sounds of an animal and a machine.
20K Hertz also did a two-part series on Mel Blanc, the creator of every memorable cartoon character of the mid-twentieth century. We all need this kind of nostalgia right now.
In a Zoom happy hour earlier this week, a few of us debated the must-see baseball movies of all time. Naturally we also searched for lists online. MLB, IMDB, and Rotten Tomatoes came through with good lists. I think the IMDB list lands closest to my feelings. The Rotten Tomatoes list has some intriguing films I’m looking forward to seeing.

Weeknotes 03

2020-05-15T08:05:50-07:00

My last weeknotes post was in February. I’m not sure why I haven’t posted any weeknotes since then. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We are already half way through the month of May. Time is wondrous and a beast. At the moment, my perception of time is confusing. A year from now, I hope this will all make some sense.
On Friday mornings, I set aside time to read Austin Kleon’s newsletter. It always has a refreshing collection of thoughts and links I don’t come across in my normal web surfing. A recent issue was called, “Not everything will be OK, but some things will.” That issue and the article of the same name continues to inhabit the front of my mind.
The Prophecies of Q about the conspiracy theory Q Anon was the most interesting thing I read this week. Little bits of psychology are scattered throughout, but they come to a fascinating conclusion: when people want to do something that betrays their core beliefs, they will go to amazing lengths to create a reality in which they have no choice but to do that thing.
Confession: I didn’t actually read the article above. I listened to it. There is an embedded audio player in the article. Give it a try. As a regular podcast listener and occasional audiobook listener, I think long form journalism is a natural fit for audio. And the time commitment is reasonable. I usually listen to one or two articles while I make dinner.
I love when smart people post advice in list form to celebrate their birthdays.
Two of the best articulations of Trump’s derangement and incompetence come in the form of this article by David Roth in The New Republic and Trump’s call to Fox & Friends last Friday. If you only click one of those links, it has to be the second one. Listen to the man talk and tell me he isn’t broken.

Weeknotes 02

2020-02-09T18:05:50-08:00

We went to Oakland to see the Mortified Doomed Valentine’s show on Saturday evening. One of the speakers was a guy who made music videos when he was in high school. He even described how hard it was to sync audio when editing with two VCRs. I thought, “Yes! Preach, brother!” It might be time to dust off some videos from my own archive.
I’ve been playing with a looping pedal for the first time. I admire musicians who are good at it because it isn’t easy. It takes precise timing with your feet while playing. So far my loops start with a heavy, mangled strum and then settle down for the second measure. Which brings me to…
Timing. I’m also learning about music timing. My goal is to be able to identify the timing of any song I hear. That is so I can…
Program drum loops in Garageband. I’ve briefly played with tweaking MIDI piano tracks before, but never drum loops. I’d love to have a song or two that have backing music that doesn’t sound like you’re in an elevator or at the mall.
I found a lovely coffee table at Goodwill for $26. I’ve been slow to decorate my house because I tend to wait for objects to feel right. This one immediately felt right. I love how it fits into my home. I’d still like to add a rug to the area. And…
I’m still in search of a dining table and chairs to round out my downstairs living area. Having a nice place to sit and share a meal is my biggest goal—which is probably why it’s taken me so long to find the right set to add to the room. I’m looking forward to having people over more frequently and cooking for friends and family.

Weeknotes 01

2020-01-14T11:05:50-08:00

A fantastic podcast about the different ways we connect and how social media affects those interactions.
Another excellent podcast about the plethora of web tools a business uses and how hard they’ve become to manage. The discussion about intranets is particularly relevant to me now as there are discussions about intranets on our campus. I’m ambivalent.
I finished season one of The Leftovers and I’m enthralled. It feels like Lost, with fewer confusing storylines and a less expansive world to maintain. As with Lost, it does a good job of exposing human messiness.
We walked the length of the Devil’s Slide trail in Pacifica. Go there at sunset. It’s beautiful.

Post-election Facebook posts

2017-01-07T10:35:28-08:00

Here are screen shots of the 51 posts I’ve made about politics on Facebook since election day 2016.

To my white male Facebook friends

2014-12-10T00:00:00-08:00

Your friends, community, neighbors, co-workers of color come to you and say, “I am harassed, threatened, terrorized on the street by police officers. I am experiencing systemic inequality on a daily basis. I live in constant fear that myself, my brother, my son, will be unfairly convicted of a crime, or shot on the street, simply because of what we look like.”

And you say, “That is impossible. Racism has been conquered. We have a black president. Everyone lives an equal life here.”

And you walk away, convinced that this person is wrong. You have abandoned them, because you are not taking their report as possibly accurate.

My question to you is: In any of these cases, have you done your best?

Since August 9 of this year, I have discovered the depth of my own ignorance about privilege. It has been humbling and difficult; because stepping outside of the world you think exists long enough to see the world as it actually is not easy. I have made it a point to listen and avoid rationalizing away the suffering of others. This is not an issue of cops versus people of color. It is not an either/or discussion of whether or not you support law enforcement.

It is a discussion about equality. It is about fairness. It is about respect. You say, “not all cops” are bad. But the problem is, enough cops are. And you have seen them. You have seen them on video. Bad cops. Killing Americans.

I’m not sure how I can help. But I think a good start is to listen and call attention to the people who are out there fighting for equality.

Plan vacations to be breaks, not work

2014-09-23T07:05:50-07:00

Camping is wonderful because it shrinks your world down to a manageable number of choices. Over the course of a day, you can only do so much. There is only so much to do. You can count most of the possibilities on less than two hands.

Having a limited number of possibilities means that you can rest assured you are not missing out on anything outside of your awareness. Anything you can do is in your field of vision, every morning. And the list shrinks as you do things, so you don’t have to worry about an endless list of to-dos or want-to-dos.

It’s a list you can reach the end of! For a web developer, this actually takes some getting used to.

We planned our recent vacation while we were still in work mode. Because we were in work mode, we applied the core philosophy of work to our vacation: “There is so much we could do, we need to fit as much into this trip as we can.” Throughout the planning, we never stopped to consider leisure as a necessary element of the trip.

Two days into the trip, neither of us could reconcile our feelings of ambivalence toward the long drives we had planned in order to reach our far off destinations. And then the weather turned against us, forcing us to ask ourselves what we really wanted out of the trip.

The answer was undeniably less. Less driving. Less destination-hopping. Less like our work week: filled with obligations and devoid of down time.

I don’t think either of us realized this when we planned the trip because we were both in the middle of hectic times at work. It is so natural to fill every day from start to finish with tasks that we planned our vacation the same way by default.

I’m proud that we spotted the problem early on and made the right adjustments before embarking on a trip that would have left us exhausted (and soaked!). We stopped, did some thinking, and changed course.

And the vacation was awesome.

Being better

2013-11-13T10:22:51-08:00

If you haven’t yet read Merlin Mann’s interview on The Great Discontent, it is a must read. I really love this quote:

Not to get all Catcher in the Rye again, but is there anybody who donates money or volunteers their time without writing a Facebook post about it?

There is so little dignity about how we care for other people. It almost feels like if we don’t get to collect a ribbon for what we do, then it’s not worth doing. Sometimes I feel like it’s really more about personal branding than it is about helping people.

If you want to really help people, then go out and help people. It’s like when people say, “Buy this pink yogurt, and a portion of the proceeds will go to charity!” Well, you know what’s really great? Donating directly to a good cause and having the entire portion go to charity–and you don’t have to act like you’re Ghandi because you bought a snack. Just go spend some money on something you care about, then shut up about it: that’s a dignified way to be an adult who helps people.

This is something that has been on my mind a lot this year. I’ve written about the discrepancy between the way someone acts online and the way they are in-person. Previously, it only existed in meatspace. You were different when your family was around than you were with your friends, which is different from you with your co-workers, etc.

We all have this discrepancy. I have it and so do you. The difference between us is the size of this discrepancy. The internet allows this discrepancy to be much larger than previously possible. On the internet, no one can see you lie. So, like Merlin says, you can look like you care because you spend 8 hours each week telling people you do.

And what is alarming is that the satisfaction you get from people who like, fav, and comment when you profess to be caring is enough for some people. Once they step away from the internet, that satisfaction prevents them from actually giving a shit.

We used to be afraid of Second Life, because it was an online world where you could be whatever you want to be. Second Life has never really grown beyond a small percentage of the population. But that is not because the concept didn’t work, it’s because Facebook took it’s place. Think about what Second Life provided to people: the ability to be someone else and interact with different people who match that other person better than your real-life friends. Also, you interact in this world with very little in the way of real-world consequences.

Now you have Facebook, where you can be someone else without much in the way of real-world consequences. So there is an unconscious opportunity to augment your persona professing to care when your real-world behavior falls painfully short.

Keep moving

2013-08-14T23:22:51-07:00

In my 20’s, I never had any doubt about my physical ability. So a simple workout consisting of weight-lifting and some form of cardio (usually a run) was all I needed to keep fit. As much as I love to get exercise, back then it was almost an afterthought. I could roll into the gym on 5 hours sleep and power through a workout and then go for a 3 mile run and not even think about it.

As I approach 40, I think very differently about my overall health.

I’m mortal. I get aches and pains. There is less “bouncing back” and more thud. I routinely get more aches and pains than I did a decade ago. And even though that should be obvious to anyone–including me–the only thing it reminds me of is the need to keep moving. And now that I’m so keenly aware of my own mortality, I feel this ache in my heart to keep myself healthy all the way to the end, whenever that may be.

There’s a great bumper sticker quote: “Live hard. Die young. And have a good-looking corpse.” Fuck that. Live well, die old, and be able to stand on your own two feet, right to your very last day.

And so now I workout truly without taking it for granted. This is my religion. This is my wellness. I do this to prove to myself that I’m living well and not just living.

And here I am. At a fresh 37, gracefully trying to maintain a gift I was given at a very young age. The gift of good health.

The lives of others

2013-01-11T09:28:01-08:00

As I walked into the office this morning, I noticed a homeless guy hanging out over by Derby Park. The thought of him spending the night in the cold was unbearable to me. I was getting out of a warm car, headed for a (mostly) warm office, to spend the day with warm people. And here was this guy, sitting at a cold metal picnic table on a cold winter morning.

I went in and put my stuff down and decided to go buy him a cup of coffee.

He’s younger than I am. Through our brief conversation, I learn that he’s an alcoholic who has lived on the street for 7 years. He drinks a beer for breakfast and spends the day collecting recyclables to pay for food and his drinking habit.

That is his life. He is younger than I am.

Sometimes, I think we are afraid to get close to people like him because it reminds us how close we all are to that. Or so we can pretend that part of society doesn’t exist: the part that sleeps outside every night for 7 years.

I’m now in my warm office, drinking a warm cup of tea, talking to warm people. And he is outside, thinking about a beer, trying to make it all go away.

I think I’m being vague in this writing because I don’t want to think about it. I just want to imagine it doesn’t happen. I just want to pretend the worst of society is boring meetings and uncleaned lunch dishes in the office kitchen.

It’s not. Be sympathetic to that. Always be sympathetic to that.