San Francisco!

Every day: ride my sweet new shiny impractical single-speed bike to a train that I can put my bike on, thus making a long commute doable.*

Tuesday: saw a film about coffee, called A Film About Coffee, playing at the beautiful old Castro Theater. Ran into a couple friends from CMU. Found out they're coffee geeks too.

Yesterday: ran into my friend Jared on the train coming home. Talked crowdfunding.** Enjoyed a beer (brewed at 21st Amendment, San Francisco). Rode my impractical single-speed bike up to Bernal Heights Park to catch the sunset (or, more appropriately, the fog-roll-in) over the city. Picked up new beans at one of my favorite roasters in the world, Ritual. Saw a creme brulee shop***. Of course I stopped in to the creme brulee shop. Practiced meditation with tips from a new meditation teacher, who I had read a lot online, and then just ran into at Maker Faire a few weeks ago.

Today: free Stumptown cold brew coffee from someone promoting their whatever delivery service. As I got on the aforementioned awesome train. Later heading to an EFF event and a local mashup DJ's show.

Tomorrow: Tati's arriving here for the summer! She'll be in Sunnyvale, which is not super close, but getting around is totally doable, thanks to bike, Zipcar, and that wonderful train.

* the pessimist could say that, in another city, I might not have to commute 40 miles. Fair enough. Not saying jobs in valley + Caltrain makes the city better than just having jobs in SF. But given that I happen to have a job in the valley this summer, the train makes a reasonable life possible.

** crowdfunding is one silicon valley buzzword that I don't think is just a buzzword. I like the world that it enables.

*** you know, because that's a thing.

Man! I am laughing about what a stereotype I am, but I am also just laughing because I so enjoy all of this!

Bikes don't get numbers if I just buy them off the shelf.

They do get names, though. My latest addition: Jeppe Laursen.

Q&A:
Q: What is it?
A: An SE Draft Lite single speed urban bike.
Q: What's special about it?
A: Basically, it's fun. It's sleek and pretty lightweight, it has only one speed, it still has flat bars so I can handle the hills, but it feels pretty snappy on flat ground overall. Hard to explain why it's fun to ride, but you know how running on sand is really difficult? It's the opposite of that. Plus, not that I'll own it long enough to do maintenance, but maintenance is pretty easy.
Q: Don't you already have a bike?
A: Sure, I've got four.
Q: But, don't you already have a bike in San Francisco?
A: Yes, but-
Q: isn't this inferior in pretty much every way to the bike you already have?
A: Well, yes. It's lowish-grade steel (my other bike's aluminum), and, well, it has no gears. But it's more than good enough. And at $320, I can't ask for too much. Plus, I can sell both of these bikes, so it's maybe not as silly as it seems.
Q: Who's Jeppe Laursen?
A: Senior from Junior Senior, of Move Your Feet fame. (stop right now and listen to that song.) Also, he later recorded this. So, you know, he is about as goofy and impractical, and fun for the summer, as this bike.

Interesting effects of moving to a new place

I feel a need to assert my identity. As if I need to start drawing lines, like "I'm a Mission guy, not one of those wacky SoMa nerds or bros in the Marina* or yuppie folks up in Russian Hill/Pac Heights/Nob Hill/whatever." I don't like admitting to people that I work in tech. I'm self-conscious about my Caltrain bike tag. I shopped for clothes, as if to say "I'm the kind of metropolitan guy who wears Beta Brand, not a techie rube who wears cargo pants and sneakers."

* I hear that there are bros here, and they live in the Marina? Huh? Whatever.

Relatedly, I always hear people complaining about gentrification, even though they're the gentrifiers. I mean, I'm one, right? But everyone always points the blame somewhere else. "Yeah, you just moved here, and you work in tech, but you're not like one of the problem people." Sure, nobody thinks they're a problem. It's like we're railing against some possibly-nonexistent Terrible Gentrifying People who just move in and make the city terrible by throwing money around.

But this is all just one story, right? You can tell a crummy story about any group of people. If your story is "Terrible Gentrifying People come in and throw money around", then you spend a lot of mental energy trying not to be one of those, instead of just doing good things.

(at some point, I was talking to someone about potential uses of tweets and stuff to help understand cities, and I mentioned gentrification, and he said something like "Don't do a project about gentrification. Stay away from gentrification. It's such a loaded, meaningless word.")

Bike #...4?: A.C. Newman

Shiny, popular, fun, but your parents would still like it: I give you A.C. Newman. I needed a bike for my 3 months here, commuting ~5 miles each way daily, able to handle the hills of San Francisco, sturdy, ideally not getting many flats, hopefully not a super theft target.

A quick Craigslist search didn't reveal much that would fit all those needs. So I took the advice I recently gave to a friend on Craigslist and bought a $500 entry level hybrid, the Norco Indie 4.

Can I just take a minute and praise the $500 entry level hybrid? Bike companies should get together and give this a name. I'm talking about the Norco Indie 4, the Marin Larkspur, the Kona Dew, apparently the Trek 7.2, the Specialized Sirrus. They should get together and say "look, all these bikes are our versions of the $500 entry level hybrid", and then whenever your friend said "I'd like to try biking, what bike should I get?" you can say "go to your neighborhood bike store and get a $500 ELH." They're nice rides, smooth, comfortable, versatile, not super light or fast but they will get you where you want to go with a minimum of fuss. Quality bike-shop parts (not department-store), so you'll have a minimum of Bad Experiences (flat tires etc). They're not super slow, grumpy, or ugly either. This article calls them "fitness hybrids" (and in fact that article is a good guide if you're in the market), as opposed to "comfort hybrids".

Anyway, this one's got fat tires (but not like fat tires, 700x38c), fat aluminum frame, and flat bars. Disc brakes, which I don't really care either way about but might as well try. Low-end (but not like low-end) Shimano parts, but honestly I can't tell a difference, and it feels smoother than my mid-range Surly. (having pros putting it together probably helps.) I like it.

PLUS, I got to support Pedal Revolution, which seems like a darn cool place. Got some new gizmos too: locking skewers from Pinhead and a hardcore Kryptonite lock because I'm a small town boy terrified of theft in the big city, some Knog Blinder LED lights (USB chargeable!) because they're small enough for me to actually carry with me when I lock up the bike, and a sweet Giro helmet because I was not thinking enough to bring one (or lights or a lock) with me. Welp.

I call it A.C. Newman because it's from British Columbia and it's called the "Indie", and I don't know who's much more indie pop than the veritable BC New Pornographer Mr. Newman.

And if you're really stretching it, you could say it's got pretty fat tires and is not a super lightweight bike, so you could even call it (wait for it...) The Slow Wonder.

Goodbye Pittsburgh, Hello San Francisco, For Now

I think this is mostly a post for my future self. I have a pretty good record of a lot of my life on my blog, but the last year or so has been pretty blank. Some of that is busy-ness, some of it is really not feeling like recording anything. I don't have a hard life, by any measure, but recently it's been harder than it has been in the past.

Looking Forward: man! I'm in San Francisco! This is neat. I'm starting my internship at HP Labs next week. We're going to try to do something with smartphone overuse, to help people who think they use their phones too much to use them less. Tati's coming out for an internship too, but I don't want to speak for her too much; I'm just excited that she'll be here. This summer's shaping up to be pretty great.

San Francisco is a fun place. Big city! Bikes and coffee! Uh, exciting events that happen every so often! Point is, you can have the best things here, and you can meet other people who are also interested in having the best things. (it may be capitalist heaven, which is weird, but better than being a hell, I suppose.) And it turns out I know a lot of people around here already, from one thing or another.

Work-wise, I'm excited about work back at CMU too. Getting more into geography in many forms, trying to figure out what exactly we're going to do first, but moving right along. My advisor Jason is cool (would I write if he wasn't? regardless, it's true) and we both see a lot of potential in using social media data (tweets etc) to understand our cities better. Somehow.

Looking Backward: I've heard some people say the first year of a PhD is the hardest, and I've heard some people say the second year is the hardest, and I've heard some people say doing a thesis is the hardest, and they're all correct. At least, the first year and the second year are both definitely the hardest.

The hardest part is not knowing what I'm doing, and feeling like I'm not making progress. I *am* making progress, and I guess you could say I had my first paper acceptance this semester. It was a workshop, so that's not huge, but I guess it was a pretty competitive workshop actually, so it's something.

But anyway, other thing I did this semester #1: I built a bike. Other thing I did this semester #2: I learned a lot about design fiction. (a newish field blurring the lines between design and art, if you ask me. did you see the movie Her? that's kind of a good example of it: imagine the future, where we have some particular technology, but instead of focusing on the technology, focus on how it affects our lives.) I finished up the semester with a really fun project where I tried to make friends with some corporations on Twitter. Modern corporations are people, right, so I wanted to see what their personalities are like.

I'll be in Pittsburgh for at least three or four more years. Which is great, because I love it there. I feel like I have the best of all worlds: great close friends, and a wide social network too. Just wonderful folks. And I've got Tati, and a great family, and you know, I'm feeling more optimistic than I have in a long time. So that's something too.

I built a real bike with gears!

Yes!

I don't even know if I can remember all the parts that are on it, but at least I talked about a bunch of them in the last post. Further things:

Front derailleur: Shimano Tiagra R440 Double 9-speed braze-on, $31
Rear derailleur: Shimano Sora 3500 9-speed, medium cage ("cage" is the length of it, depends on the cassette), $28
Cassette (all the gears on the rear wheel): Shimano Tiagra HG50 9-speed road, 11-30 teeth. (so the smallest is 11, biggest is 30.) $19

Shifters: Shimano Tiagra R440 9-speed flat bar road shifters - $71. This was funny to me, that the shifters cost more than the derailleurs. I guess that's how it goes. Anyway, they're pretty good. They're trigger shifters, so you click with your thumb or pull the trigger with your finger to make it go up/down. Turns out a shifter for a double cog is just a triple shifter but you don't use all three speeds. Simple enough. Also, installing and tweaking these wasn't as much of a bear as I'd thought. Cables and housings were included with the shifters.
Cable stops (for shifter cables, that mount where downtube shifters would be if you're using those) from Iron City Bikes, $12. Turns out these ideally mount with the barrel under the screw, not above, but that's mostly a cosmetic difference.

Chain: SRAM PC951 9 speed chain, 114 links, $14. I thought I'd have to add/remove links, but I didn't; just put it on as is. I guess it's a 3/32-inch chain, as opposed to 1/8-inch (like my single speed). It's got a PowerLink connector, which seemed to me actually more difficult than just using a chain tool, but what do I know. I got this chain, the shifters, the cassette, and the derailleurs from chainreactioncycles.com.

Brakes: Shimano... Alivio I think? V brakes, from Kraynick's, and I think like $15 each. Cables also $5 each, so total $40. Thing I didn't know: V brakes and road bike brakes aren't the same. They're both linear pull (as opposed to cantilever brakes) but V brakes look like this:

and road brakes look like this:


Pedals: cheap black metal platform pedals from Kraynick's, $15. I'm sold on metal pedals after some cheap plastic ones I had on my single speed actually broke. No clips or toe cages or anything; I find that annoying. (note: "clipless" does not mean "without any clips so you can ride it just like a normal bike pedal", it actually means "the kind of pedal you clip into", weirdly enough. if you want "normal" bike pedals that you can ride with your regular shoes, they're called "platform".)

Seatpost: Virtue Promax 27.2 integrated clamp seatpost, from Iron City bikes, $20. Not sure what Integrated Clamp means but this looks like all the other seatposts I'm used to.
Saddle: Virtue Rivet saddle, from Iron City bikes, $15 - this thing is pretty hard, I might change it with Brian Eno for a softer ride.

Handlebars: used flat black ones from Kraynick's, $3. I'm kind of looking for some new ones, as this is the single ugliest part of my bike now. But I do like them to be flat. Replacin' these with this XLC Comp flat bar, 25.4mm clamp diameter, 580mm long, 5 degree bend. I learned that 25.4mm is the old style, most new handlebars are 31.8mm, and that gives a smoother ride too. But this has to match the stem. Welp.
Grips: new ones from Kraynick's, $5. I did not know that hairspray really helps get them on. (and they're really hard to get on without hairspray.)

Fenders: like $20 from Kraynick's. Parts from Kraynick's, I can't really tell you much about them, because often I just ask him for X and he rummages behind a counter and finds X.

Front light: CatEye EL 135N, $22
Back light: Blackburn Mars 3.0, $19
Lock: OnGuard Bulldog Mini U-Lock, $37 - these are all pretty self explanatory, but I am springing for some pretty decent stuff because I am tired of my lights not working. I use lights that take AA/AAA batteries too, instead of watch batteries, because I can recharge them. Also, better bike needs a better lock? I don't know. I do know that a couple of my locks froze last winter and so I had to sort of worriedly breathe hot air and pour hot water on them to unfreeze them before I could unlock and ride them home. Ugh. Maybe this more expensive lock won't do that.

Total: $1302. Well, at least I got a good quality bike, and I must have saved some money by building it myself... wait. Oh well, at least I didn't spend way more than the bike costs. (and to be fair, I counted fenders, lights, lock, the whole deal, which I'm sure aren't included on that one.)

Interesting approx breakdown: frame $500, wheels/tires $250, drive train $125, shifter stuff $125, everything else $250.

But more importantly, hell, I learned a lot. And it was/is fun too! I'm riding it around, and it is nice to have gears. It is nice to ride on a bike that is made of really solid parts. It's nice to ride on a shiny new bike!

Name: "Stephen Malkmus" just doesn't fit. This bike is too shiny. Kind of sleek, dark, pricey, still just a little gritty, surly (hah), able to travel but really feels at home around a city... I'm now thinking Thom Yorke. (though willing to hear other recommendations.)

Thanks: to Jerry at Kraynick's, Ryan at Top Gear, Colin at Iron City, Stacey, and Dad for all in their own way helping make this bike happen!

Bike 3 is on the way

I was going to just post when it's all done, but I better start posting or I'll forget some stuff. Here are some parts I have now, costs, and what I've learned about them.

Frame and fork: Surly Cross Check 60cm black. (Yes, another black bike. Well, it was black or this awful green.) $480 shipped.
It's a "cyclocross" frame, which means it's for people who do this crazy cyclocross racing, I guess; whatever. A little more durable than a road frame. If a road bike is 1 and a mountain bike is 5, and your hybrid is a 3, cyclocross seems like 2. So that's nice for me: I'm going over crazy Pittsburgh potholes daily, and would love to take it touring someday.
As for the specifics, Surly seems to be making bikes in the range I'm interested in: nicer than the bike shop entry level stuff, but not race/pro/hardcore quality. I think they're a good brand to consider if your budget is around $1000. That probably seems like a ton of money for a bike to people reading this, and yes, it is. But it's all relative.
Others I was considering include the Surly Pacer (more of a road bike), the Soma Double Cross (very similar to the Surly), Soma Smoothie (more roady), Velo Orange Pass Hunter (maybe an extra hundred bucks, and more touring-ish), and the Pake C'Mute (kind of a step down, and hard to find).
I got it faced and chased, as Surly recommends, for $40. Not sure if it's super necessary.

Wheels: double-walled wheels from Iron City Bikes. 700c x 28-38. 32 and 36 spokes. I don't know much about the hubs. They do have disc brake mounts, which is useless to me, but they were the ones that they had on hand. Quick release spindles, which maybe is not awesome. $144 for both.
Rim strips: there are some that you have to glue, and some that are stretchy. I got the stretchy ones. Not sure why you'd want the gluey ones. $7*2=$14.
Tubes: stock tubes for 700x25-32. Like $5 each.
Tires: Vittoria Randonneur 700x28 tires. (note that the wheels and tubes are both a range. I wanted 28-width tires and then bought the wheels and tubes to match. 20-25 are kind of road widths, so 28 is kind of the first step up into something a little more durable and softer, but still pretty light and quick. Good for touring.) They are supposedly pretty puncture resistant. $40*2 = $80. Got these from Top Gear Bikes. They're good folks too, have been helpful. I think they're a little higher than my price range in general; that $1000 is a small amount of money to them. But they're nice.

Headset: Cane Creek 40 Series 1-1/8" External Cup Threadless Straight 34mm Black EC34/28. $43. This is the part that connects the fork to the frame so you can turn smoothly. Cane Creek is a reliable brand, as far as I can tell; folks recommended it to me. But I don't think it's super critical; others work fine too. The only other brand I heard people talking about was Chris King, but those are crazy expensive and don't work any better.
Steer tube spacers: a handful of them, for $10. The weird thing about forks is that they always come longer than you want, so you have to saw the top off. Saw off! A part of my bike! Needless to say, I was terrified of cutting it too short, so I just got a bunch of spacers, more than I can possibly need, so I can try it as is, and then remove spacers and recut if I want it shorter.
Stem: at Kraynick's, they're all $20. Just got a regular threadless one. (I was toying with getting an adjustable one, but you don't see them around, and I think that's because they're just one more thing that can break, and they probably make it less stiff. Stiffness is good.)

Cranks: Shimano Sora FC-3550 2x9 Road Crankset 50/34T 175mm Black. That's the parts that the pedals attach to. The big choices here are: 2 or 3 front gears, and how many teeth? I picked 2, because it seemed easier. Then I picked 50 and 34 teeth, because those seem on the higher end, and I tend to pedal hard, rather than fast. (I've heard this is not a great thing. I guess I'll work on that someday.) Oh, also, decide whether you want square taper, splined, or two-piece. Two-piece is the future, I guess. It means you can have external bearings, which means that they last longer and do better. Okay. $60.
Bottom Bracket: Shimano 105 bracket. 105 is a step up from Tiagra, which is a step up from Sora, but whatever, they had it in stock at Top Gear and it was only $4 more. $30 total.

Okay, that's all I've got so far! Pictures will follow at some point. I'm thinking of calling this Stephen Malkmus, because hipsters respect it and it's best on Pavement. We'll see.

Another article about enlightenment

http://www.psychologytomorrowmagazine.com/inscapes-enlightenment-and-science/
more from the same guy: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/the-anxiety-of-the-long-distance-meditator/

More for my own reference than for posting to y'all. I keep running into this stuff, mindblowing (literally) stories with some kind of brain imaging, same characters (Shinzen Young, Daniel Ingram), a pretty reasonable story for why it's not more widespread (we're just getting into the age of really understanding things in the west that Buddhists have known for a while, appropriating them into our own language and culture). Then I go read Dharma Overground for a while, and then I get fed up because it's all so much talk.

Wow, when I put it like that, it sounds like crazy talk. Well, I'm not sure it all isn't. But it seems like the most reasonable conception of spiritual experiences that I've got going, so I'm half-skeptically running with it for now. Speaking of which, I'm going on a retreat the week after next (March 10-16) at Bhavana Society so maybe I'll have more direct experience to report then. But based on past experiences, don't count on it :P

A thought about the Olympics

Is this really what we want, as a celebration of world peace and togetherness and what have you? Rabid competitions, where bumping your leg once derails your four years of preparation? It's a spectacle, not of amazing sportspersonship, but of constantly tearing people down.

When I'm in charge of the world, we'll get all the athletes together and have them do some ski jumps and tricks, and after each one we'll point out what was so absolutely amazing about that trick. Or have the cross-country skiers race next to an average schlub so we can see how freakin' fast they are. Show why the speed skaters do that really fluid loping thing when it looks like they ought to be taking more steps. Show how much higher our athletes can jump compared to the last Olympics, or how much steeper moguls they can ski, or how much more accurately they can curl.

And no medals, and no nations. I realize we can't all get along on a day to day basis when there are important resources at stake, or cold wars, or snowdens, or whatever, but just for once, when we're all getting together to play sports, can we try to set a more collaborative tone instead of competing with other nations for the most gold coins? If I were an alien who saw this, I'd come back in a thousand years when we're a little more civilized.

What a year.

2013 hasn't been the easiest. The careful reader may note that I posted a lot less here in 2013 than most years. Work has been difficult: trying to figure out my place and succeed at something here. As it is, I'm kind of starting over now on a new thing. Which is exciting, because I feel like it might kind of work, and I kind of know how to do it.

On the other hand, I think that for each of the last 16 months, I thought "next month will be better". So not getting my hopes up too much yet.

Still, at least it hasn't been boring! At least I'm not under-challenged. I'm probably learning something and exploring and growing and meeting people and so on. It's the sort of thing that's easier to know in retrospect, probably.

Dealing with the way some part of my brain deals with video games

I started playing FTL (warning: takes about an hour to get into but then is very addictive). I've gone through this cycle with other games: addiction followed by quick burnout. I know that I do this; it's fine, I just make sure that I burn out quick and then get back to my regular life. At first I reasoned I just had to beat the end boss, and then I'd be done. And I was, for a few weeks.

But then I picked it up again for some reason, and this time I decided I had to unlock all the ships. This seemed fine, too, because I was unlocking them all pretty steadily, except the Crystal ship. (I used knowledge from the wiki and I figured this was fine because I was still the one playing the game.) But then I looked up how to unlock the Crystal ship, and realized it was orders of magnitude harder than the other ships. It'd be hours of grinding! But I couldn't just put the game down, not with a ship still unlocked.

Then I decided that it doesn't require skill to get the Crystal ship, just luck. You have to get to the right planets in the right order, and sometimes they just don't line up right. So when I found some other post where someone posted his save game file that would allow you to effectively cheat your way into the Crystal ship, I grabbed it and unlocked it.

Somehow, my brain was okay with that, even after it wasn't okay with just cheating from the beginning. And now that I've unlocked all the ships, I'm effectively done with it. (I don't have to, for example, get all the badges.) Good thing that, even though I couldn't rationalize quitting without getting the Crystal ship, I could rationalize cheating for the Crystal ship and then quitting.

What a mess to have a brain!

Bike #2: Frank Black

This is my bad weather bike. Batavus Navajo, classic Dutch style. I found it in my basement when I moved in. Not sure who it used to belong to (none of my roommates, current or recent past), so at this point, adverse possession or something, right?

Plus, it was a mess when I found it. It's not awesome now, but I've done a couple of key things:
- unstuck the seat post (and it was really rusted in there. The fix eventually involved taking the wheels and seat off, attaching a vise to the seat post, and turning the whole frame around it. Thanks to John at Kraynick's for help. If you ever have your seat post out of your bike, take this opportunity to grease the heck out of it!)
- replace the brake pads (these were "cantilever brakes", which are new to me. not too tricky, though.)
- remove a couple of European bike things: a wheel lock and a dynamo/generator/front light thing. The first is neat because you can lock your bike, low-security but quickly and easily. The second is neat because gathers power from the rotation of your front wheel, meaning you are powering your light by yourself! I had both of these on my bike in Maastricht (as did most people), and they were nice. I removed these from this bike here because they were broken. Took a little brute force; thanks to a couple random folks at Kraynick's.
- add one key European bike thing: fenders. It's so much nicer to get where you're going without being covered in rain/snow and ruining your clothes, especially for a bad weather bike. Most people in Maastricht had these too. They should come pre-installed for city/hybrid/commuter bikes. They're so good.

There are minor but important differences between Dutch and US bikes. I mean, this thing was all tricked out for the average person to ride around town. No lycra here. Plus, the handlebars are really high, so you're sitting upright like an average person, not a speed racer. Here, you bike if you're "a biker"; there, you bike if you're a person.

So why's it called Frank Black? Because it's a little grungy, and I ride this bike when (wait for it)... "it is time for stormy weather."

Donating money: a brain dump for 2013

Why donate anything?
We who earn USD can make a lot of difference for people abroad
We in tech (and non-tech folks too) sometimes have more money than we need
It seems like the best cost-benefit tradeoff to make the world a better place

Your possible objections:
I can't be sure I'm doing any good.
That's definitely valid; here I mostly hand it over to GiveWell, who vets their organizations pretty thoroughly. In the end, it is all a bet, but giving to a well-researched organization seems a good enough bet for me.
I don't have time to research anywhere to donate.
Here again I point to GiveWell, who seems thoughtful enough for me, and I usually just donate to their organizations. They're interested in doing the most total good for your dollar; it's sort of utilitarian. If you're into that sort of thing, I like them; if you're not, I'd argue that maybe you should be. (related: how personal should your giving be?)
I don't have money yet, but I will someday. (this likely applies to many of my HCI student friends.)
That's fair. Especially if you're a student. Anything you donate now will be dwarfed by your future donations. (with corporate matching, maybe.) In that case, view your current donations primarily as a way to build a habit. Donate some percentage of your annual income. (or, donate some percentage of your income minus some basic level of living expenses. keep that level constant as your income grows.) If you start donating 1% now, that is a not-insignificant chunk, which will become a huge chunk in the future.
I don't have money yet, and never will.
That's fine too. Don't donate, then. There's no imperative here. For you, it may not be the easiest way to make the world a better place.
I didn't plan for it in this year's budget.
That's fine. Start next year. Pick your target amount, parcel it out week by week. If you make $25k, and you want to donate 1%, that's $250, which is just $5/week. Put cash in an envelope. (seriously!) Or use whatever money management system works for you; I'm not getting into how you should organize your life.
I don't think it's a good way to help the world.
Fine argument. Perhaps you believe that we'd be better off with a free-market utopia or something. I disagree with you, but let's take that offline. The point is, if you donate money to a well-researched organization, even if you haven't done The Best, you have still probably done some good, given the state of the world right now.
It doesn't fit with my current schema of how I manage my money or my life.
This is actually a great point, because it's really probably the biggest reason not to donate. To which I say, it's a pretty arbitrary decision; you can make it a part of your life whenever you want. Why not start now?

Where I'm donating this year:
20% to Kiva to help their operating costs. This is because I've been lending money through Kiva for years, and don't usually donate to help them. Kiva (and all microfinance) might not actually help alleviate poverty. Might even promote unhealthy capitalism in the long run, in that Kiva's organizations are making money off of their clients, and their clients in turn are setting up businesses. Not sure the world needs to be more based on setting up businesses.
On the other hand, microloans do help people smooth out money issues and repayment rates are high, which implies they're not just setting up a huge cycle of debt.
So I'm kind of ambivalent about this, but like I said, I've been lending money through them for years, so my consistency bias in addition to the pluses outweigh the minuses.
80% to GiveDirectly, GiveWell's top rated charity this year, which is also being matched by Good Ventures.

Side notes:
I was thinking about setting up a "gift matching" thing myself, where I'd match y'all's gifts up to $x, but it struck me as dishonest for a couple reasons:
1. I was prepared to donate $x anyway, so I'm either lying about the matching, or I'm withholding money that I would otherwise donate
2. We both kind of get too much credit. I get to say "I helped raise $2x", and you do too, but we each only raised $x.
More on gift matching.

What are your other questions or objections?

Best albums I heard in 2013, and my #1's not Yeezus

It's only a tinge of iconoclasm, and mostly that I just don't really want to listen to it a lot. Anyway, I'd sooner put MBDTF on my 2013 top 10 list, because that album is good enough to time travel; Yeezus is great but not my favorite.

Overall, I was a little disappointed by 2013 music. A lot of my favorites seemed like evolutions, perfections of an existing thing, rather than a new thing. Still, some favorites:

CHVRCHES - The Bones of What You Believe - like this, this is a really good attempt at making a perfect pop album. I was debating whether this was one of The Greats. I don't quite think so, but it's close.

James Blake - Overgrown - I played Retrograde on the radio and was entranced. Think I looped it pretty continuously for about a week. Someone on the internet wrote "Put Thom Yorke in 2099 and you have James Blake." Not a terrible description.

Mrs. Paintbrush - Duke 2 - This is Jackson from Grand Buffet. You haven't heard it yet? You must be wearing glasses made of bullshit! (also, buy it.)

Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City - a million websites will tell you why this is good better than I. It's not light and airy like their debut, but it's pretty deep in that I still want to hear it. A lot of feelings. Standouts include Step and Everlasting Arms.

Grimes - Visions - okay this is 2012 but deserves to be on another Best Of list. Might be one of The Greats.

What was very good but not quite my favorite:

Haim - Days Are Gone - feels like it's from the 80's. Starting off the record with Falling is pretty electric; I was convinced I was going to hear another one of The Greats. The rest of the record didn't quite live up to it, though Forever and the title track came close. And then can we talk about "My Song 5"? More of that please.

Lorde - Pure Heroine - Put this a half step below CHVRCHES as my favorite atmospheric female-fronted pop album with standout singles. It feels like a pop album produced by The xx.

Alt-J - An Awesome Wave - Thanks to these guys for doing something a little different in a pop album! Maybe it's just that the main guy's voice is a little weird.

The Knife - Shaking the Habitual - Look, Kanye followed up his epic genre-defining masterpiece with something abrasive and weird, and everyone loved it! Why has everyone snubbed this one? Whatever, it's got its high points (most of the actual songs) and the rest of it is, well, too weird, but I'd rather have too weird than not weird enough.

Daft Punk - Random Access Memories - Okay you love this too, and Get Lucky is the best all around mainstream pop song since Crazy (or maybe Hey Ya!), let's move on, but play Contact one more time first. Yes!

Julia Holter - Loud City Song - Atmospheric concept album that I ought to listen to again.

Janelle Monae - the Electric Lady - not quite up to her first record, but a pretty fun concept album with some great dancy bits. Especially QUEEN and Dance Apocalyptic. I even liked the interludes, and that's rare. I did not like, well, the slow songs.
Jai Paul - self titled bootlegged/unofficially released album - I take back what I said about 2013 being boring; this is great. It might even go in the "favorites" above, but I haven't had enough time. "Listening to a Jai Paul song sounds like a tuning into a pirate radio station being broadcast directly from someone’s brain." Avalanches meets Yeasayer?

What was apparently way older than 2013 but I liked a lot:

Elsiane - Hybrid - RIYL Bjork

Tune-Yards - WhoKill - exuberant weird vocals. Bizness is so joyful. And the line "So sorry but you only stood half a chance/ now it's over and they're walking all over you" from My Country (at 1:23) is so perfect.

David Bowie - Station to Station - and give Low another listen, while you're at it.

Talking Heads - Naked - maligned last album, actually pretty solid, especially Blind.

Kitsune Maison compilation 14 - dance pop, low on depth but quite sugary. Maybe I should get some of the others. Friends's I'm His Girl (Jake Bullitt Remix) stands out.

Uakti and Philip Glass - Aguas de Amazonia - this year I started tackling my to-listen queue from both directions. A long time ago, my uncle Jim recommended this to me, and I just tracked it down. Nice atmospheric.

Bad memes

Networking. All-nighter. If you're saying these words, you're probably doing something wrong.

People have been meeting each other for ages, making friends, and getting jobs from people they know. But when we start talking about "networking", this common practice becomes something that instills fear. (which in turn makes it harder.)

Similarly, you shouldn't "pull an all-nighter" for pretty much any reason. But it's become a thing among students (and maybe others in high-pressure jobs), so people do it, and talk about doing it. Even the fact that the word exists legitimizes it. If you talk about how you didn't "pull an all-nighter", maybe you're saying "well, I slept 4 hours", which, due to the anchoring effect of "all nighter", feels legitimate even though it's terrible. And you're still contributing to the existence of the concept "all-nighter". It's like "don't think of an elephant" - for better or worse, you start thinking of elephants.

For a harmless example, look at "planking." It's kind of funny. But now that some people started "planking", it's a thing, and for better or worse you might find yourself planking sometime.

But imagine if instead of "planking", we talked about "pebbling", where "pebbling" means "throwing pebbles at someone you don't like." This is going to have mildly negative consequences. Some kids will pebble some people. Adults will overreact and ban pebbling or something. It'll be a whole flap just because a word exists.

So, I guess, all this garbage about what goofy words the OED is adding actually matters. Be careful what words you use? Stop talking about all-nighters? (Linguists, I bet you've known this for ages. Maybe I'm just rediscovering the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or the idea that memes are powerful?)

A mild case of Holiday YOLO

From The Scotsman newspaper today: "This emerging group of middle-aged thrill-seekers is increasingly driven by the phenomenon of "holiday YOLO" (you only live once)..."

So I spent three days with my wonderful friends Daniel and Killian tromping around these hills and castles. I mean, exactly what I had hoped. I'd heard that the Highlands are great and saw some nice pictures of this town called Ullapool, so we stayed there. So good!

We drove in one direction (har) and found a thing to climb. Then we found some castles and islands. In the other direction, we found this gorge. We also found Sigur Ros landscapes and haunted hotels. We drank a lot of tea and looked at sheep. We even found a weasel.

they are getting married in a few months and this photo better show up somewhere there

weasel right in the center there

Here is a tip: if you listen to new music while driving through someplace particularly stirring, you'll make great associations. Even if it's Katy Perry. (for the record, I blame Killian.)

Then I went to a conference called UIST in St. Andrews. Also great! Beautiful old ruined town, great place for a conference, stayed at a cool little B&B, saw a lot of cool technology, talked to great people, got some ideas. I will write more about that in my research focused blog.

bagpipers right in the center there

I quite like this place! Wouldn't mind living there for a spell. Everyone we met was so friendly, the scones and whiskey are good, and just like I hoped, there are hills and wind and ruined castles everywhere. More realistically, wouldn't mind biking around it, with or without a motor.

more photos, if you are so inclined

If meaning in life is self-created,

if there's no "meaning of life" except what we create for ourselves,

could you just decide "the meaning of life is to be really good at Super Mario Bros", dedicate yourself fully to it, and be satisfied?

(I pose this argument as a straw man; it feels like there's something wrong with it. do help me figure out what it is.)

Vitamins

In fall 2006, I was having a tough time. Junior year, taking the hardest classes I had yet, and not really knocking them out of the park. I was living with some good friends, too, but it was a 4-person 2-bedroom apartment, which is still kind of stressful.

I used to take multivitamins. I noticed, at one point during fall 2006, that I had just about enough vitamins to last until the end of the semester. After that semester, in the spring, I would study abroad in the Netherlands, and I guess I figured that senior year would be good and I'd go find a great job or something, and pretty much everything would be fine if I just got through that one semester. Every day as I took my vitamin, I'd sort of muse about it being a little suffering pill. After I got through those, it'd all be golden.

The weird part of this story is that I was pretty much right. I studied in the Netherlands, it was pretty fun, I got a cool research gig and had one of my best summers, enjoyed senior year, rolled on to Google, got into grad school, bummed around the world, and it's all been fine. Until this year: work has been tough.

For kind of dumb reasons, I happen to have another bottle of multivitamins. I figured, might as well take them, as long as I've got them. And then I started forming the same story, about having a little bottle of suffering pills.

But you know what? Could be that vitamins are bad for you. So I'm throwing them out.

Things contracting a bit

Sometimes life expands, and you start a thousand new projects and buy some stuff and make new friends. Sometimes it contracts, and you tie up loose ends, get rid of things, clean house. Now is the latter for me.

At work, I'm getting into a worn groove. Not quite a rut, but a path that a lot of people have stomped down before me and that I'm learning how to walk in. Depth is nice; learning to become a class-A grunt in any line of work is useful. You get blinders, though, too. Everything you and your friends/coworkers do becomes just the standard way to do things. (I'm a little convinced that there are things we grad students are doing poorly, particularly the worrying.)

Otherwise, things are fine, I feel healthy physically, I even have a bit of leisure time to do nothing. I'm done with my bike and my radio show (for now), got fun social things to do but am avoiding adding work for the time being.

I've been dreaming a lot less, since I started here a year ago. My brain feels fuller. I'm not worried about not growing. I am sometimes worried that I'm not doing what's important. (Working on changing that.) I'm still not sure how anyone can be content, ever, pretty much period. I still feel like an eager, angry, and excited kid.

The bike lives!

Well, that was quick.

I spent a couple hours at Kraynick's today, and it's good to go! The last few parts (bottom bracket, cranks, chain, brake) all came together really easily.

Here are the parts (and this is as much for my future benefit as yours)

Eighth Inch Scrambler frame set: $150, includes frame, fork, seatpost/clamp, headset.

Frame: 59cm chromoly steel, horizontal dropouts

Fork: 1 1/8" chromoly

Headset: threadless

Seatpost/clamp: whatever, it works

Seat: Velo Plush something, I already had it around

Stem: $20, XLC adjustable A-head, it says: ø: 25.4mm, and 90mm 

Handlebars: $3 bargain-bin, plus some old grips I had lying around

Brake: $25 Shimano Sora BR-3400 (like this) dual-pivot side-pull brake, recessed mount. 

Brake lever: $3 bargain-bin mountain-bike-style

Brake cable and housing: $5

Bottom bracket: $26, Shimano UN55 68x107mm Square Taper

Crank set (includes sprocket): $34, 170 mm, 46 teeth, 1/8" steel chain ring
Another crank arm (non-drive-side) because the first one got rounded off after I didn't tighten it enough: $3

Pedals: $5, bargain-bin

Chain: 1/2x1/8" KMC Z410 BMX-style for internal gear hub/single speed, maybe $10

Wheels: $110, includes tubes and tires, 700c x 18mm freewheel/fixed (riding fixed now)

Lights: a couple little blinky things I had lying around
Lock bracket: $2 (to hold the lock on)

Total: $396, which is maybe about $96 more than I was planning to spend, but not terrible. Time invested is in the low tens of hours- maybe 20 or 30 if you count all the looking things up online.

Riding a fixed gear bike: a little weird! I'm nervous to go anywhere near as fast as I usually do. I have no idea if I'll be able to go on hills ever. For that matter, the following things are also weird: only one brake, skinny hard tires, no gears.

But the following things I love: no quick releases, pretty lightweight, the look of the thing (isn't it pretty?), almost no logos, and I know everything that went into it and how to fix a lot of it.

All it needs is a name! Taking suggestions.
EDIT: I think the best name, as suggested by someone on my kickball team (Tim, I think?), is Brian Eno. Because: A. it's minimalist and great, and B. what gets you more cred than a hand-made fixed gear bike named Brian Eno?
EDIT EDIT: Thanks also to my dad for the bike stand!

EDIT AGAIN:
wanted to catalog some important things I learned:
- to get the headset into the frame, use a headset press, without the bearings in it (which is obvious if you think about it, but you can smash the bearings if you don't think about it)
- when installing the bottom bracket, be careful when starting it so you don't cross-thread, and put anti-seize compound (which is like grease plus molybdenum bits) on it
- install the bottom bracket on the drive side first, and don't ride it if it starts to come loose!
- when installing the cranks, really crank them the heck in there (and then re-tighten it after every ride for the first couple hundred miles).
- you want the chain to be tight. Tighten the left axle nut (not sure what that's called), then pull the wheel into place while tightening the right one.
- don't take the tip off your crank puller and then try to use it :-/