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Lemon Wine Redux

First Published: 2023 June 27

Draft 1

It’s been a little less than a year since the last time I mused about lemon wine, and it seems like an appropriate time to do so again. Last year I apparently made a single batch of lemon wine before writing the musing. I ended up making one or two others, which was really fun.

This year, the recipe has changed slightly. As before, I cooked approximately eight pounds of sugar in water. This time, though, instead of lemon juice, I used pure citric acid.1 I also took a note from my second batch last year and didn’t add the lemon juice to my must.

There are a few reasons I think that’s a good idea, most of which revolve around the fact that my yeast can’t metabolize citric acid and I don’t really want it to metabolize the ascorbic acid.2 The other flavoring oils shouldn’t be digestible, and again, I would like them to remain. Also, adding lemon juice drastically drops the pH of the solution,3 and I don’t want to stress my yeast out.

It’s really strange to me how many flavor notes fermented sugar water has even without other additives. I don’t think I really believed that different yeasts actually produced ester profiles before this. The fermentation seems to be stalling out a little bit, but I’m hopeful that it won’t be true in the morning. If it is, I’ll do my usual lifehack of sprinkling a small amount of yeast nutrient to get rid of all the dissolved carbon dioxide4

It looks like I’ve historically used three quarts of lemon juice, which still seems like an appropriate amount. Anyways, I’m excited to see how this batch comes out. I think I’m going to do something that I’ve thought about since I started making lemon wine5, and dry hop it. I’ll go into more detail about what dry hopping is when that becomes relevant.

449/53

  1. because I own that now.↩

  2. since that’s vitamin c and anything to make my life healthier is great↩

  3. shockingly↩

  4. similar effect to sprinkling sugar in coke or any other carbonated drink. Small particles mean lots of nucleation sites, means bubbles go away↩

  5. my 21st birthday officer↩

  6. because wow the air quality is terrible↩

On Writing Again

First Published: 2023 June 26

Draft 1

Huh I hadn’t even realized that my last post on writing was less than two months ago. It was a very short post, more so1 about my lack of writing for the day than anything else. Today, I want to talk about a few writing things I’ve learned or rediscovered lately.

First, I found a new workflow for writing my book. I am easily motivated by numbers going up2, so I had taken to writing my3 chapters in an online word counter, which updated the character counts basically any time that I stopped typing for half a second. Someone at the conference I went to was horrified by that workflow, so I spent a few days using TeXShop’s built in word counter, which was slightly less nice. Today, though, an online source recommended StimuWrite, which is basically just weaponizing the dopamine bursts of using the internet as a way to make you write more efficiently. The features I love most about it are the pleasant4 moving backgrounds it lets you set, and the fact that there’s a fun little progress bar that tells you how far through your goal you are. It does mean that my workflow now looks like writing the goal, copying it into my document, changing the word goal, and deleting the text in StimuWrite, but that’s the nature of the beast I suppose.

I don’t think that I’m particularly more efficient with this tool, though its explicit lack of a spell checker does mean that I rewrite words far less often while actually typing. I think that it does certainly help me to keep writing when I’m halfway through a sprint, though. Looking down at the bar that is sixty percent filled5 and watching it slowly tick up as I write a few more words is really motivating to me for some obvious reason.

But, not all is roses and sunshine in the realm of my writing. I realized that I haven’t really written any sonnets in ages. I know that sonnets are like (insert metaphor here). The first time I write a sonnet, even just after taking a break6, it’s very difficult. If I keep it up for a few weeks, though, it becomes almost as easy as just transcribing a sonnet.

Back in the realm of sunlight and flowers, I wrote a letter to a friend today! I apparently fit nineteen words on almost every line7, which is a strange number, especially since it was reproduced on more than half of the lines.

Once more leaving the realm of daytime and flora,8 I would like to journal more. In part, I think it makes me more thoughtful. In part, a book I’m reading recommends it. In part, someone I look up to a lot does it daily. Between those three parts, it seems like something I might benefit from doing, especially since I already have topics in mind.

Looking back at that last paragraph, I’m reminded of why I started this blog. It was to be a digital diary, in part fulfilling course requirements. However, the reflecting I do here is far different than the reflecting I do in my private journal. I don’t want to say that it’s sanitized.9

Anyways, I’m glad to have at least a little bit of time to start returning to normalcy before my life goes crazy again.10 I need to write up a character for a DnD one shot I’ll be playing with friends this weekend.11

732/235

  1. which I will always think should be spelled moreso↩︎

  2. as should be obvious, given the genre I write in↩︎

  3. uncompiled LaTeXbecause I am a monster↩︎

  4. which I always think should be spelled pleasent for some reason↩︎

  5. yes I am aware that sixty is more than half, but I like to round and it’s my ’blog so I’ll do as I please↩︎

  6. read: of multiple years↩︎

  7. known because I’m absolutely counting these words in my daily word goals↩︎

  8. which I would like to alliterate, so optionally, read as daylight and daisies↩︎

  9. but it absolutely is, I have no other way to end that sentence↩︎

  10. oh that’s next Wednesday. Crud. I legitimately need to be two chapters ahead by next Wednesday, because I will be unable to write from the fifth to the seventh. Being ahead enough for the following week would be ideal, though unlikely.↩︎

  11. my first ever paladin!↩︎

  12. read: I did the smallest notable amount↩︎

  13. which is already not particularly flexible↩︎

  14. back of the envelope math suggests I need two chapters for the actual week and I want five extra, so that means seven chapters by Friday (or Sunday, since the number of chapters I post over the weekend is none [but that’s not the goal, now is it?]). That’s basically two a days for the next four days, which somehow feels both very doable and impossibly difficult, as all goals should.↩︎

  15. as mentioned↩︎

Conference (etc.) Recap

First Published: 2023 June 25

Draft 1

So I’ve been absent another week and a half or so. In my defense, I was watching someone graduate, and then at a conference. In my offense,1 I could have made time for this. Anyways, in the interest of not doxxing my family2 I won’t be talking about the graduation here3. Instead, I’d like to talk about a conference I went to last week.

Despite being the most important conference that my group goes to,4 the conference is nearly unheard of. Even my friend who goes to the university that hosted it didn’t know it was happening. But, it was a great time to bond with my group, reconnect with old friends,5 meet new friends, and, of course, listen to a ton of incredible research talks. I also gave a talk, but it was far from incredible.

290/249

  1. that seems like the wrong phrasing, but it is a nice antonym here↩

  2. which I may have done in the past, but now seems like as good of a time as any to try having a bit of CS literacy,↩

  3. even though I’m nearly positive everyone who has or will read this blog will know who graduated from where and when↩

  4. a feeling that seems to be shared among a number of people↩

  5. read: people I met last year at this conference and then forgot about for a calendar year↩

  6. though i did need to walk for parts of it↩

  7. which does remind me of a joke. the short version is two priests smoke together. One asks if it’s ok to smoke while you pray, and is told no. The other asks if it’s ok to pray while smoking and is obviously told yes. Moral of the joke: make sure prayer is what you add to other activities, rather than vice versa. (or I suppose, find ways to sanctify anything you do, etc)↩

  8. i.e. I’m not writing the chapter an hour before it’s posted. I don’t really want to finish it before going to bed, but I know I’ll be grateful tomorrow if I do it today.↩

  9. read last musing for a rant about this word in the footnotes↩

  10. read (I wonder if there’s a meaning behind when I use read versus i.e.): I’m hoping it lowers the activation barrier enough that I am actually able to do so.↩

Spoons Continued

First Published: 2023 June 14

Draft 1

About eighteen months ago I wrote a post about having1 the energy to do the things that I want and need to do. Since then, I have been trying to figure out what leads me to feeling better and worse and being more and less productive. Thankfully, feeling better is generally well correlated for me with being productive.

One trend that I was positive that I had noticed was that I am far more productive when I am well rested. Yesterday, I was all set to write a whole blog post about how the sleep that I had yet to catch up on was going to make it so I had no way to catch up on my writing. But, I had other tasks that I needed to do.2

So, I set timers and started writing my book during the breaks that I had between timed activities. I almost effortlessly wrote the entire chapter, which made my planned post obsolete. Instead, I got to write about the reason I hadn’t been posting, which was nice. While getting a theory disproven is less than the best feeling, it was a nice thing to learn. Looking back on the times that I am more or less productive, it seems like sleep is important, though not for the reason that I had initially believed.

I still find a correlation with sleep and productivity, though I think that there is an important intermediate step or two. One thing that forces productivity in me is the lack of ability to do something else. Of course, I mean that entirely in the subjective sense. Last night, there was nothing stopping me from sitting and reading a book or watching YouTube.3 However, the fact that I knew that I needed to write a book and revise a presentation meant that I was able to write. When I’m more tired, I think that I’m more able to remember that deadlines I set are fake and only affect me.

Another, though fairly well linked issue is that I often lose track of time. I’ll look up from an activity and hours will have passed. Even tonight is no exception. I sat down and it was a little after five. Looking up again, it’s now nearly eight. Where the hours went, I’m not totally sure. However, I do find that my ability to keep track of time is improved with sleep.

So, between those two issues, I still do see why I am more productive when well rested, for all that I don’t know if they’re quite as absolute as I thought. Since this musing is a little shorter than I want, let’s talk about the predecessing4 post about mental space. I find it interesting that I continually look at scheduling my life as a potential solution. Intellectually, it very well could be, but I have such an aversion to scheduling myself that I don’t know if it will be probable for me without changing something major about my life.

I mused about the time sink that is YouTube5. I believed that I was actively lacking energy more, which I don’t know if is true. I did say that I need to eat more, because I was exhausted. More and more, I find that I become exhausted feeling when I don’t have enough water. I think that was certainly true of me while writing that post.

All in all, I think it’s nice that I can make myself work by lying to myself and saying that I need to. I wish that there were better ways for me to do so, but I don’t know how to find them.

722/101

  1. or more accurately, lacking↩︎

  2. primarily laundry, since I am about to disappear from school for a while.↩︎

  3. which I should decide whether I’m going to treat as a proper noun or not.↩︎

  4. which my dictionary doesn’t believe is a word interestingly enough↩︎

  5. which I spelled Youtube, annoyingly↩︎

  6. I’ve started writing the chapter to post on Friday. If I don’t keep writing, though, I will not have a chapter on Friday.↩︎

  7. which I think might be a british-slang way to phrase it. I don’t know if I’ve heard my friends say post a letter. I think that the American might be mail a letter? I should look that up at some point↩︎

Wedding Recap

First Published: 2023 June 13

Draft 1

Well, it’s been almost a week since my last blog post. Instead of excuses, I think I’ll make what has become a rarity amongst my blog posts1 and give a quick recap of where I’ve been.

Last Friday, I woke up at 2 am to start a four hour drive to an airport. From there, I traveled across the country to go to a friend’s wedding. While I could have made time during that day, I did not have the mental energy to do so. It ended up being more packed of a day than I expected, though I should have expected more, given that there was a rehearsal dinner and wedding. The rehearsal dinner was held overlooking a beautiful gorge with a fantastic waterfall.2

What I’m assured was six hours of sleep later, I woke to Saturday. On that day, two of my dear friends got married. It was a lovely ceremony and day. I don’t know what the bride did to get ready, but the groom spent much of his morning in prayer with his groomsmen.3 At the wedding, I had been asked to sing and I volunteered4 to play the bagpipes.

After the wedding, I had a wonderful time at the reception, meeting the newlyweds’ friends and family and dancing.5 It ended two or so hours later than expected, and the groomsmen6 spent some time that night bonding without the groom.

In the morning, even more sleep deprived, I went to Mass with some of the bridal party who were still in the town. The Parish was hosting a pancake breakfast, so I went to that with some friends who met the bride and groom at a similar time.7 Following that, I rode the two hours back to the airport with one of the bridesmaids and her partner. That was a really fun car ride! We bonded over a love of fantasy and other things.8 I taught them “my cows,” which is truly the pinnacle of car games.

At the airport, I ran into another friend who was at the wedding. We were scheduled to take the same flight back. As it was ready to board, though, we were told that it was delayed for seven hours.

Three hours later, after waiting through the entire line to die, we went to ask for a meal voucher. Instead, we were given hotel rooms and new flights. I was scheduled to fly out yesterday,9 and he was scheduled for today. Thankfully, we were able to reschedule to the same flight.

We carpooled in a Lyft to the hotel,10 ate dinner,11 and went to sleep. In the morning, I realized it was Monday, rushed to finish the chapter of my web serial, posted it, and ate breakfast. Back at the airport, I ran into the newlyweds, wished them congratulations, and saw that there was a flight boarding to my destination.

Thankfully, they were willing and able to seat my friend and I on this earlier flight, and we made it back a full three hours earlier than expected, which was great. On the downside, I’m now exhausted and missed the only full day of lab work I had the chance for this week.12 Still, I’m far too glad with the fact that I was able to share my music with my friends at their wedding to mind.

684/159

  1. honestly, it may have always been a rarity↩︎

  2. that in retrospect, I should have taken photos of. I should have taken a lot of photos this past weekend and took as far as I can tell (almost) none↩︎

  3. and me, who was tagging along↩︎

  4. or was asked, or threatened, depending on which subjective history you listen to↩︎

  5. I got to teach a shocking number of people country swing which was really fun for all that I absolutely should not be trusted to teach.↩︎

  6. and me↩︎

  7. and therefore in the same town.↩︎

  8. I cannot remember↩︎

  9. via another airport, adding a full twenty four hours to my ETa back home↩︎

  10. with an interesting driver↩︎

  11. at an Olive Garden, where we managed to pay the bill with the meal vouchers↩︎

  12. because today was a group big picture planning meeting, tomorrow we have practice talks, and I leave again on Thursday.↩︎

  13. procrastination who?↩︎

  14. which was originally phrased as an overly hyphenated phrase instead↩︎

Book Review of After the Dragons

First Published: 2023 June 8

Draft 1

For as much as the books I read tend to fall into the categories of: recommended to me, read already, closely related to a book recommended to me,1 I do also read other books. It’s sometimes hard to find books that don’t fit into one of those categories, but that’s just because I am surrounded by a number of book-lovers with distinct tastes and have a very low bar for what counts as closely related. That being said, I’m usually glad when I do.

A few weeks ago, I went to the library to check out a copy of Art Spiegelman’s Maus.2 While I was there, I walked by the table of new arrivals.3 I saw a book called “After the Dragons,” by Cynthia Zhang, and decided to give it a read.

It’s squarely in the realm of Magic Realism4, which is a genre that I think more people need to be exposed to. Magic Realism is subtly different than Urban Fantasy, though the distinction is important. In Urban Fantasy, Magic is at least on some level hidden from the average person, or was.5 Some popular examples of Urban Fantasy are the Harry Potter series, Lilo and Stitch,6 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, and Dracula.

Magic Realism, by contrast, is where we have our existing society, but Magic is just there. I keep seeing claims that it originated in South America, but I’ve seen plenty of examples of it in Russian literature. As an example, I would argue that Kafka’s Metamorphisis is one, though there are newer ones for sure. Disney’s Encanto or Turning Red would also be clear examples of the genre. I would also argue that Frankenstein fits better into this genre. A lot of Stephen King’s works fit here as well.

Anyways, four hundred words of exposition later, After the Dragons takes place in China, where dragons are slowly going extinct due to man-made pollution.7 We follow a Chinese-American here on a study-abroad equivalent8 who slowly falls in love with a Chinese man who has a degenerative illness. Dragons are how the two meet and bond, as the student wants to study them, and the Chinese man takes care of feral dragons that he finds on the streets.

It was a quick read, but an enjoyable one. There were some lines in the book that screamed propaganda to me, but I’ve been told I’m overly sensitive to that. Because the book was so short, though, I felt like there were a lot of portions that I would have preferred be fleshed out more. I would still recommend someone read it, though I wouldn’t read it again without a real9 reason.

Immediate edit: Whoops! I published this before realizing I didn’t do my daily reflection.

564/176

  1. so by the same author, stocked next to each other, someone says “oh that’s like such and such”, etc.↩

  2. Review should come at some point but I think I need to digest my feelings around it more because I don’t want that review to be rambled.↩

  3. or something. I’m not totally sure what the label was for the book display. What’s important is that there was a display.↩

  4. which I had remembered as fantastic realism for some reason↩

  5. in a number of books, the idea that Magic stops being hidden is a plot point.↩

  6. which I found on TVTropes, and am incredibly proud that I managed to avoid getting sucked into↩

  7. Magic Realism often uses the fantastic as a metaphor. As far as metaphors go, this one was not hard to understand.↩

  8. he’s a visiting researcher for the summer, but that’s close enough in my mind↩

  9. read: someone asks to read it with me or makes it clear that they would consider their life better for me rereading it↩

  10. this one↩

  11. which is arguably less healthy↩

Reflection on Monthly Reflections

First Published: 2023 June 7

Draft 1

On thing that I’ve realized is less than ideal in my monthly reflections is that they are in many respects write-only memory.1 That’s sort of an issue, especially since I tend to have forward facing goals in each reflection. One way I think I might be able to address the issues is by looking at each of my goals in each day’s blog post.2

My goals this month were broken into finite and infinite tasks, which may have been better framed as timed3 and untimed.4 I don’t think that reflecting on the finite tasks will be particularly helpful, so I’m only going to focus on the growth ones in my daily reflections. I’m going to take the rest of this post to expound on the one line goals that I have.

I haven’t invited anyone over to my home yet, and it’s starting to become messy again. I should really spend some time this afternoon getting my home cleaner. In general, I would really love to have my default vision of my home as something that is clean, rather than one that is not.

I have been blogging fairly often, though I suppose I did miss a few days already. Of the goals that I wanted to write about, I think that I’ve gone through all of them except for piping interactions and book reviews. I’d like to blog about handwriting again, since that’s coming up in my life.

Exercising three times a week has been not happening. I’ve gone for one run since the month started. I think making time to go to the gym after lunch might be a good idea today!5 At the implicit6 recommendation of a friend, I’ve also been considering doing personal training, if only because it would be nice to know that I’m approaching things in somewhat of the right direction for my goals.

Sleeping enough and getting up at six have remained fairly at odds. The past few days, while I’ve generally woken up at six, I then immediately changed my alarm to seven thirty7 and returned to sleep.

Making time for prayer has been a mixed bag. On Sunday, I certainly did. Yesterday, I remembered to pray a rosary. In general, though, I do find that I waste my time on pointless distractions, and I would rather spend that time in prayer.8

I’m currently9 about a quarter of a chapter ahead on my book, which is slightly behind where I would like to be if I’m trying to evenly get to five chapters ahead. Getting one full chapter ahead by the end of the day would be fantastic.

Writing a song is going mixedly. I realized that every song I write turns into some variation of a love song, or at least an ode to someone. I tried to go through the list of songs that I like to see what common themes in them are. In what should have been unsurprising, most of them are love-adjacent songs. The rest of them generally have some sort of folk or union vibe, which I can’t personally relate to. Still, I’m working on a10 new song that I started last night, and I do have hopes of actually finishing it.

Writing letters to friends has not happened at all. I’m planning to write one today. It’s interesting though, I never realize how bad my writer’s block is until I try to write a letter.

That does bring me to an interesting piece of introspection, which is that I find that tasks that I don’t want to do often feel nebulous until I make concrete what the issue is. Here, I know that the issue is just writing the letter, so I’m going to take a break from writing this musing to write the letter.11 That took me all of about fifteen minutes, at least half of which was dealing with pencil lead. Still, it’s nice that I’ve written a letter to a friend!12

So, I think that I’ll just replace the items within the list below this each day with quick updates on each task:

Hopefully this will help me to actually accomplish my monthly goals!

(716/197)

  1. that is, I write the data and never read it.↩︎

  2. this does also have the secondary benefit of increasing my wordcount, which is still far too low.↩︎

  3. read: done on a certain day↩︎

  4. though looking at them, this does not actually work↩︎

  5. though maybe not.↩︎

  6. original wording was tacit, but I’m not totally sure what the connotations for tacit are↩︎

  7. seeing times written out really bothers me for some reason. I’m still going to do it, but it’s good to notice.↩︎

  8. at least I think I would. The fact that I don’t sort of implies that I am not.↩︎

  9. as of 957↩︎

  10. nother↩︎

  11. one interesting piece of diaries in general (wow look at that callback to the genesis of this blog) is that there’s no good way for the subjective time of the writer to be reflected to the reader.↩︎

  12. and counting the words in the letter, I’m going to absolutely count the one hundred and fifty four words that I wrote towards my daily goal of three thousand, seven hundred, and forty (wow that’s way too many)↩︎

  13. is the new goal because otherwise it’s a finite task↩︎

  14. Current ideas: book reviews, handwriting, song progress, piping interactions↩︎

Open Mic

First Published: 2023 June 6

Draft 1

Oh wow, it’s been a few months since the last time I blogged about going to open mics. I think it’s been about that long since I went to an open mic, which is sadder. It’s hard for me to balance going to the open mic, which I enjoy, and going to sleep early, which I enjoy having done.1 Still, when a friend said that they missed my presence at open mics2, I decided it was time to dust3 off my old4 guitar.

It was hard for me to pick what I would play. For one, while I have been playing guitar, that has mostly meant doing some picking patterns, some scales, and a few songs that I don’t love singing along to in public.5 My staple open mic songs are all fairly stale, which also didn’t seem like an ideal situation. So, like all great folk musicians,6 I retuned my guitar to DADGAD.7 I’d been working on a Great Big Sea song8 that’s in Celtic tuning9, and I felt like I probably knew a Stan Roger’s song10 well enough to do them.

As it turns out, I knew the Great Big Sea song well enough, and I stumbled through the end of the Stan Rogers’11 piece. Also I learned a fun fact! My throat feeling clogged before open mics is most likely a consequence of having brassicas12 and not being nervous, as I had historically believed!

237/171

  1. wow look at that callback. I’m truly a master of the genre.↩︎

  2. not in those exact words, but that is the interpretation I’m choosing to live with↩︎

  3. metaphorically. I had literally played it at Mass that night and was practicing at least a few times a week before that↩︎

  4. it’s not really. I got it around a year ago, since I wanted an acoustic guitar that A: was in tune and B: had an amp hookup.↩︎

  5. mostly because I still don’t know Fisherman’s Wharf (the song I play the most) well enough to want to share it with others↩︎

  6. I’m not one, and it’s almost certainly overly reductive to say they all did this. I do know that Stan Rogers was encouraged to do this, though, so I assume others were as well↩︎

  7. I.e. bottom, top, and second from the top strings all tuned down one step.↩︎

  8. Boston and St. John↩︎

  9. DADGAD↩︎

  10. Harris and the Mare↩︎

  11. I’m not sure how to add the genitive to Rogers↩︎

  12. which I knew do that↩︎

On Doing Versus Having Done

First Published: 2023 June 3

Prereading note: sorry, this one got really rambly. I should probably fix it up at some point

Draft 1

Like many people, I wish that I did more.1 At the very least, I wish I had better knowledge of where my hours went.

As a result, I have tried a number of things to get my life in order.2 None of them have worked as well as I would like, but the struggle a few weeks ago did lead me to think more deeply about what my priorities really are.

I was making a list of activities that I wanted to complete. Some of them were things that I enjoy doing in and of themselves3, and some are things that I enjoy the knowledge that I have done them.4 It made me think of a nice two dimensional way to rank different activities.

The two axis5 titles that I settled on were do and done. What does that mean? Great question.

Do is tasks where doing them is itself the goal. For instance, I like reading because it’s a fun task and I enjoy doing it. It may benefit me, but even without the growth it causes, it’s something I’m glad to do. As I write, I realize I should have started with done, so onward.

Done is what I described as tasks that I do not necessarily enjoy the process of completing them, but I enjoy the knowledge that I have done them. As I mentioned in a footnote, running is really my best example of this. Every time that I run, I find it an unpleasant experience. Nevertheless, every time that I look back on a time that I have run, I am grateful to myself for having run.

Another way to think of it is future versus present enjoyment. Things that I enjoy doing bring me enjoyment in the present, as I do them. Things that I enjoy having done, by contrast, bring me enjoyment when I look back on the fact that I did them.

I have no clue if that made any sense, but it does mean that I can group most of the activities I do into four quadrants. Ideally, I would like to spend all of my time doing things that I enjoy doing and having done. Equally ideally, I would spend none of my time doing things that I neither enjoy doing nor having done.

As I made my list, though, it occurred to me that ranking the other two categories is an interesting values judgement. If I prioritize things that I enjoy having done, then I will likely enjoy each day less.6 On the other hand, if I prioritize things that I enjoy doing, I am likely to stagnate in most of my endeavors.

Returning once more to my realm of ideals, it would be fantastic if I was able to learn to enjoy in the moment all of the activities that I enjoy having done. If running became fun, for instance, I am sure that I would run more.

As I think about my day, though, I realize that I spend a lot of time doing things that I neither enjoy doing nor having done. That’s probably not great for me. Partially, it could be that I have the wrong framing for some tasks I accomplish. Failing to do something, for instance, could be reframed as setting me up for a future success and therefore a thing that I enjoyed having done.

That is not most of what I find lives in that quadrant, though. I am very easily sucked into time sinks.7 I know while I am in them that I will not be glad for having spent my time on them in the future. Even while I do them, I am not so much enjoying what I am doing as killing time.

I only have so much time, and it would be great if I stopped trying to kill it.

643/95

  1. wow that’s such a bold start to a blog post.↩

  2. non-exhaustive list includes: scheduling events by the minute, saying what activities I want to do before and after certain milestones in the day (like going to work), making a list of activities I want to do, to do lists (which are different somehow), ranked priority list of all the things I need to do↩

  3. e.g. playing music↩

  4. running is really my best example for this. I hate running but love when I have run↩

  5. axes?↩

  6. at least according to first-level effects.↩

  7. specifically, useless time sinks↩

Universe in the Park (Part 3? 1?)

First Published: 2023 June 2

Draft 1

As I mentioned yesterday, I gave a talk this past Saturday. It was a part of my university’s1 “Universe in the Park” series. I went to a State Wildlife Area2 and gave the first of what is currently3 scheduled to be six4 talks this summer.

My talk changed a lot from what I gave last year. Last year, I had titled my talk “Prebiotic Chemistry in the Interstellar Medium,” which is not, in retrospect, as good of a title as I had thought. With the added wisdom of almost ten additional months, I revised the slide deck almost completely. It is now titled “Searching for the Origins of Life in the Coldest Regions of Space”, a much more evocative title.5

My first talk went really well I think, all things considered. The general format of a Universe in the Park presentation is giving a short-ish lecture6, answering audience questions until they run out,7 and then using a telescope until either the park is closed or everyone is bored. Despite now being trained to use the telescope’s GPS features, I used very little of them.

Mostly, people wanted to look at the moon, which is fair. Unfortunately the viewfinder8 had gotten misaligned from the viewing scope, and I didn’t want people to have to wait for the9 five minutes it would take to align them together. Instead, everyone got to see the moon through the viewfinder, and then I coupled the two.

It was then that I learned just how quickly the moon moves through the sky. I found that I needed to adjust the sight every four or five people.10 Every time that I did, at least three mosquitoes took their chance to bite my face, leading to more than a few jerks. Thankfully, the moon is11 bright enough that I was able to quickly adjust it back by following its aura.

After everyone viewed the moon and was impressed by its many craters12, I moved the view to Venus, both to use the GPS alignment and because it’s the only other object I think is cool to look at in the sky. Switching out the optic for a more powerful one, people were able to see that Venus, like the moon,13 has shaded regions.

At that point, the number of people there was dwindling. I pointed the telescope to a few stars14, and people all filed out by ten pm or so. It still wasn’t even fully dark, not that I’m complaining.

I even got feedback from the park person.15 It’s mostly irrelevant, except for a quote which I want to exemplify more daily, “It covered the science behind space much more in depth than I thought it would, which was fine. But he also, related it well to what people would know about, including kids. He also was not thrown off by any questions that were asked”. I choose to interpret this as meaning I went in depth but still kept people engaged. What more could I hope for as a scientist communicating to the public?

(508/362)

  1. or the state, or the astronomy department, depending on where we draw the line (or the donor who funds the talks I suppose even)↩︎

  2. which is like a state park except focused on research not tourism↩︎

  3. very actively debating signing up for two more↩︎

  4. UitP (as I abbreviate it), I’m giving at least two other formal talks outside of this program↩︎

  5. the clever amongst you may notice that the two talk titles are reducible to each other. That is somewhat intentional. (for those not in the loop, searching for the origins of life is just a less (differently?) jargoned way of saying prebiotic chemistry, and the coldest (relevant) regions of space are in the interstellar medium)↩︎

  6. which I claimed would be forty five minutes despite knowing in my heart that it would be more like 25↩︎

  7. favorites from this past one include “so what do you think of astrology?” (asked by a 20 something), “why do stars look blue and yellow?” (asked by a youngish schoolchild [side note, I do love that schoolchild is a great way to say “I know that they’re older than four, but that’s all I can commit to”]), and “so does space really smell like raspberries?” (asked by a father, to which I responded something along the lines of “it’s the same ester that makes rum smell, so they could have had a much more fun title with ‘space smells like rum’”)↩︎

  8. read: weak telescope coupled to powerful telescope to allow for rough aligning↩︎

  9. optimistically↩︎

  10. interestingly, I’ve realized that in my writing I still naturally default to objects first, but I then immediately change it (here I initially began the sentence “every four or five people”, but changed it before finishing the sentence. I’m sure musing about how my writing has changed almost 220,000 words published over two web serials later would be interesting, but that’s probably best left to another time)↩︎

  11. was?↩︎

  12. I promise that sentence is not sarcastic at all. Maybe hyperbolic, but I think to at least a first order approximation everyone was↩︎

  13. Moon? I forget how capitalization rules work with celestial bodies↩︎

  14. spoiler, stars look the same↩︎

  15. i forget his actual title↩︎

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