PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

When you’re working on something, and you know what you’re doing, and don’t need to keep stopping to figure things out, then the work is effortless. There’s a flow.

But when you must keep stopping to figure things out, then even the simplest tasks can be tedious.

This is especially true when working with technology and doing things on a computer. You know what you want. You have a clear picture in your head, but every now and then you must pause and figure out how the computer does it.

BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

Business communication is especially laborious because written communication needs to be focussed, terse, to the point, yet comprehensive and detailed. Not too wordy and not too vague. Somewhere in the middle.

And that’s why, for many things, we have templates. It removes the “staring at the blank page” syndrome that many writers face when trying to put something down. And now we have Artificial Intelligence, like CoPilot and Claude and Gemini and so many others. Even for simple things like writing a comment to something you’ve read or watched online can be automated. Simply tell your AI agent what you’re thinking of saying and it will draft an articulate response. It may vaguely sound like you would have, but you’ll agree it’s better said that you would have.

That’s how Hallmark made its fortune. “Let me tell your loved ones how you feel for you.” So, when you want to send a greeting card for any occasion, just go to your nearest bookstore and browse through the many cards, already written for you, and try to match the sentiment that you’re trying to express.

BACK TO PRACTICE...

In software development most of the work to build tools for your business, the stuff that needs you to do some scaffolding, is already done. I know. I came from the world where even placing a button on an HTML page was tedious let alone writing the code that the button will call when it’s clicked.

And in software development, a developer can be hung up on some of the simple things while trying to get to the most important part of the tool, the actual business logic. You need to know the simple stuff innately but should not spend too much time on all your projects dealing with the scaffolds.

So initially you practice. You do a lot of work learning a framework so that the framework can do most of the heavy lifting for you. The framework allows you to set up a project, get all the user interface elements on the screen, set up databases where you can store your data and then frees you to do the important stuff. Writing the business logic. The fun stuff.

CODING PAGES

I first wrote about coding pages in August 2024. By then, the idea was not fully fleshed out but the gist of the exercise was to eventually end up with a personal script for automating the boring stuff. To get you quickly to the interesting stuff.

And I focussed on a single programming language, Python, and a single framework, Flask. With Python, Flask, Bootstrap and SQLite a technically competent person can do a lot of interesting things on a personal computer to automate their own work.

It’s just like being super competent using Excel VBA which goes beyond Excel macros. The Kenya Revenue Agency uses Excel VBA to automate the submission of tax data and while they don’t do it very well, I’ll give them a few points for trying. Clearly a web-based solution would be even better. I&M Bank uses templates to automate their batch payment system which includes payroll.

The idea behind coding pages was that at some point a developer would be so comfortable with the setup that they could get to the business logic part of the development in less than an hour.

BOREDOM

And then unfortunately boredom sets in. Once you’ve done something a hundred times, and you can do it in your sleep, you no longer feel the need to keep doing it repeatedly. And the next challenge was to script this scaffolding part. By the time you got to the scripting exercise, your Python and Flask expertise was solid. You knew how to set up manual authentication as well as multi-factor authentication using Google’s Authenticator App, Blueprints to modularize business logic, Jinja2 macros to automate the building of repetitive user interface blocks and manage database access manually.

I must say, as an old school developer, I’ve never bothered to learn any of the object relational model frameworks, like SQLAlchemy. I find them too heavy for the small stuff and my SQL knowledge gets in the way. Since I know how to get to the data using plain SQL, I manage the complexity of having SQL statements all over the code by putting them in modules.

Anyhoo, the boredom is a good sign. It’s a sign that it’s time to move on. A muscle has been strengthened, and it needs a new challenge. The focus is now on fine tuning the scripting so that the automation becomes solid.

USE IT OR LOSE IT

And finally, once that muscle is built, if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. And it’s not only about software development, or drawing, sketching, woodworking, gardening. It’s also about writing, reading, meditating and thinking. At some point, just like I found out with the coding pages exercises, which I still do today, if you do not switch it up, do something slightly different, you’ll get bored, you’ll stop using it, and it will fade. The trick is trying to figure out how to stay interested. More on that perhaps later.

THE BOTTOM OF THE MOUNTAIN

“Because it’s there,” George Mallory’s famous reply when asked why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest.

Every task is viewed from the perspective of the bottom of the mountain. A letter you must write, a performance appraisal for employees, that tax filing you must do. Getting to the start line of that marathon run.

Life is bottom of the mountain stuff.

Wood Allen also famously said “90% of life is showing up.” The problem is getting to the start line, opening the blank document, and writing the first words, getting dressed and making your way to the bottom of the mountain. If life teaches us anything, getting to the start line is 90% of the problem solved.

And most of us never make it there. Mostly out of anxiety of overthinking the target. So focussed on the goal, the end point, and trying extremely hard to work backwards to the start, that we never make it to the start. We do not move from where we are because the discomfort of not knowing how we will move forward will work will play out causes inertia.

ALWAYS SOMETHING BETTER I COULD BE DOING

That’s the other problem. When faced with something you should be doing, we think of more interesting things that we could be doing. Like listening to music. Or watching a movie. Or riding my motorcycle.

It is procrastination but not readily recognizable so. The word better could be replaced with rather, more interesting. When George Mallory replied I’m sure he didn’t stop to wonder why he was actually doing it. Come up with a reason that would satisfy his audience. Come up with a reason that would satisfy himself. The consensus reason. Have a purpose for why I do what I do.

That thing that you should be doing only seems daunting (as Mt. Everest would be to anyone) only because you’re thinking of the plus 12,000 feet to get to the top. Of the sheer climbs, the rope work, the treacherous cold and possibly the statistical possibility of failure proven by many who have not made it to the top.

THE FIRST STEP

Nobody can really see what’s in your mind and as you’re working on something, your critics are bound to ask you many questions as you’re working on something. And sometimes, you don’t even know until you’re somewhere in the middle. Like, “where are you going?” and you say, “I don’t know, just going for a walk.” You’ll figure it out while you’re out there. Some things don’t need too much planning. Too much planning gets in the way of making that first step. Just put on your shoes, grab your keys and step out of the door. Then orient yourself in a direction and move. It’s that simple.

But there are some projects that may take a while longer. Like a longer road trip. Decisions on which route to take. Whether or not you have enough fuel in the car. When to leave and when to return. Or if you’re making a cabinet. Or writing a book. Or an essay. Or doing some gardening. Those may need a little bit more preprocessing, but too much thinking may stall that first step. And for many of those things, even the ones I’ve mentioned, a rough plan is the best plan. Because there’s no such thing as a perfect plan. And in all of those tasks, the result is known, only the path is not fully planned.

FINALLY… ANALYSIS PARALYSIS

The biggest obstacle I find, personally, that fuels the inertia at the start line is not having enough knowledge, not knowing enough, to see the task through. And being afraid of messing up just to start over again. So I research and research until I believe I’ve covered ALL the bases. Thought of all the obstacles. Planned each step and are confident that I’ve thought of all the possible scenarios and mitigated all potential for failure.

Hah!

That process never ends. It ensures that I remain at the bottom of the mountain, looking up at the sheer climb, never seeing the peak and wondering how far up it is and whether I’m standing at the right place for this climb. The overthinking says, don’t even open the computer and start writing because you may need to delete everything you’ve written and start all over again. Don’t go to the start line of the marathon, you may not have covered every aspect of the training and you may not be completely fit enough for this. Don’t write that letter, you don’t have all the facts to present to the group or all the answers.

The truth of the matter is that you never will. And that there’s never a perfect time. And the best that you can do is just take that step, and deal with the lack of knowledge as it comes.

 

 

QUIET - THE SILENCE BETWEEN THOUGHT

It is right on the tip of my tongue. I can sense that it's there, but I cannot express what it is. I cannot even describe it but I'm very aware of its presence.

I found another excellent read and cannot wait to finish it. In many ways very similar to many self-help genre books on discussing how to generate peace, calmness and tranquility in the messy and noisy distracting world. With a million things competing for your attention and the wealth of information out there urging you in all directions so that you do not miss out on anything. "Stillness is the Key" by Ryan Holiday is a good short read that does a good job at describing the method of getting still. Not necessarily quiet, but still.

For the most part, we know most of that stuff. How smartphones, TV and the Internet are sucking all the spare seconds, minutes and hours out of our lives. How we cannot sit in silence for even five minutes without wondering what is going on out there. Even while having a meal, the phone isn't too far away, or the tablet or laptop is playing something while we eat.

When I visited South Korea in 2024 one of the things I noticed is the silence in the public transit system. Everyone is totally focussed and engaged in swiping media on their phones. Even when walking on the streets, as well as crossing them. While the same thing goes on in Toronto, where I lived, it's only after my visit to South Korea that I really saw the effects of the complete absorption by the smartphone.

ALWAYS ON - ALWAYS AVAILABLE

One of the biggest problems with the smartphone is that it combines a relatively simple device (the mobile phone) with a very powerful one (a mobile Internet device). With connectivity provided by the phone's data plan, you're now always available. And everybody knows where you are at all times.

The "notification" system on the phone is an ingenious, though unquestionably, unarguably and decidedly the most fiendish part of the smartphone. The notification system puts the phone in charge of your life and your smartphone becomes the boss - not you. By turning on notifications, you delegate responsibility for your actions to your phone.

And you simply CANNOT IGNORE NOTIFICATIONS. No matter how you try, if the phone buzzes or pings, your curiosity will override your determination to control your time and you'll at least take a peek. And once you take a peek and even if you cannot see the notification but are able to see the sender, your attention will inevitably be drawn to further investigate the contents of the notice.

PRACTICE SILENCE

Mastery of anything requires practice. You don't become proficient at anything overnight. For most things it may take years of doing it over and over and over again.

I ran my first marathon in the mid-80s in Montreal in a finish time of four hours and fifteen minutes (or thereabouts). It was a punishing, gruelling run. I did not know what to expect when I got to the start line and that race taught me valuable lessons about pace and staying within my own competency.

Ten years later I cracked my personal wall, the sub-3 hour run in Ottawa. And that race, though challenging was not as punishing as the first one.

Practicing silence does not mean meditation in a quiet room, but rather spending time without distraction with your own thoughts. It means sitting quietly, on your own, without your phone, without media and possibly without a book to read or write in and just being there.

Practicing silence doesn't ask you to stop thinking and try to empty your mind. It only asks you to sit and observe. Even observe your thoughts and weigh them against the here-and-now. As much as possible discard thoughts about the past and shelve thoughts on the future. Entertain thoughts of the present, of the air, the chair, the sky, the walls, the sounds or lack of sound.

Practicing silence asks you to do your best NOT TO JUDGE what your brain is thinking about, but to observe it.

What will ultimately happen is that you'll learn how to stay in the present. It won't come overnight, it will come with practice. Very slowly. The stressful anticipation of something coming up tomorrow or next week will be controllable and not feature in the now. The disaster you had last year will not terrify, but will be an interesting page in your life. Just that. A page, that's now been turned.

MEDITATION

And ultimately, a form of meditation will take place. Since you're not looking for a distraction from silence of just sitting down, in order to stop your worst thoughts from running away and destroying the quietness, you focus on the breath, on the feeling of the world around you and try as much as possible to stay focussed on what is happening now.

It is a slow process. It is a growing and a learned process. But you do something regularly and frequently and it becomes a habit.

DIGITAL DETOX

I'm well on my way to completing my second month of digital detox. I knew that smartphones and the Internet were distracting. One quick peek into Instagram and I'd be surfacing for air an hour later. Exhausted even though I was just sitting down and scrolling, with one hand.

I just didn't know how bad it was and I'm ready to admit that I was probably addicted to some types of Social Media. Like Instagram, Twitter (before it became "x"), and YouTube. I did not have a minute of boredom in my life. Whenever boredom snuck up, I would distract myself with my phone.

I would also distract myself with Netflix, Hoopla and Kanopy. Movies, documentaries and comic books. While I don't consider Netflix, Hoopla or Kanopy Social Media, they also have a way of sucking you into watching content for hours. They profile your viewing preferences and spam you with shows that you may enjoy, and they're getting better and better at doing this. I used to watch only full-length movies. 90 minutes and I was done. Then the series got my attention and I was hooked. Yes, I did Netflix marathons.

And, of course, my huge excuse for keeping my phone handy with me all the time was for "efficiency." So that I could look things up quickly and not "waste time." I could also justify hours of YouTube viewing by saying that most of the stuff I was watching was tutorials and educational content. Honestly, that may have been 50% of the content. The other 50% was most likely tech reviews, motorcycle videos and track and field events.

DETOXING

Clearly I wasn't the only one worried about the amount of time I was spending online. I borrow a lot of ebooks from the Toronto Public Library and a number of authors discussing the issues around the addiction to Social Media started to hit my radar. Not all the content was reasonable to follow. In some cases, smartphones are now part of the day job. That's how communication is achieved and so some tools, like Zoom or WhatsApp become work tools.

Some of the advice to keep your smartphone away as soon as you get home, the minute you step into the door, did not seem realistic. Employees on-call cannot do that. Indeed, much of the advice, many of the books had an academic feel to them and were mostly practical for white collar workers, specifically in the United States, who had a significant measure of control over their daily schedule.

But I did patch together pieces of advice (like Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism, or Tech Stress by Peper, Harvey and Faas) into a coherent program that seems to work for me.

From August 12, I stopped keeping my smartphone on my bedside table. It's an iPhone so it was on "do-not-disturb" all night. Also, no shiny iPads or other tablets to watch any media before I sleep.

I also uninstalled, from my iPhone, YouTube, Netflix, Hoopla and Instagram. Unfortunately, WhatsApp is a work tool so I just needed to be careful to Archive all the groups that were not useful. But I've kept Spotify, my workouts and my meditation are addicted to instrumental jazz - what can I say?

Then I unsubscribed from all the news and information websites that I had memberships in. Reddit for example, as well as all the online retail shopping websites. I didn't cancel my Amazon account, but I did disable all communication unrelated to purchases. I reduced the volume of information and spam emails from almost 30 daily, to about 5.

Between August 12 and September 12 I did not watch any Netflix movies or television shows.

And I'm still here.

This second month, September 12 to October 12 has been more of the same. The original intent was to slowly return to some amount of Social Media activity, not like before, but something sane. But I haven't determined what that looks like and so another month of no Netflix, no YouTube and no television. I don't miss Instagram and in fact wonder why I spent so much time following my favourite motorcyclists.

DISTRACTION

My use of Social Media was clearly to make sure that there was no downtime at all in my life. That there was no opportunity for boredom and that even when I was tired of working, and needed a break, rather than sit in stony silence or go for a walk, I'd switch on the smartphone and look for something amusing.

The result of that distraction was always more fatigue than when I started the break.

The perceived boredom wasn't really as bad as I'd thought and I'm now used to sitting down for a meal without touching my computer, my iPad or my phone. Just sitting and eating in silence. And if I absolutely have to do something, and I'm not in company, then I read a book, or write (with a pen and paper).

Those moments that I used to distract myself with Social Media have found purpose in better sleep and even when I'm going crazy because I have no energy to do anything, I can always jump on my motorcycle and go for a refreshing ride.

To Think, To Write

I was online thinking about why writing on the computer is so tiring, but writing on my notebook, on paper, with a pen, felt tip, isn't tiring. I can just keep rambling on and on without stopping.

And I've written a lot of words in my handwritten notes.

But I've also typed a lot. Much of that stuff remains in anonymity.

So I decided to find out how most authors write the stuff that they write and here are a few reasons.

Handwriting,

• Allows them to think SLOWLY.
• Forces them to be ACCURATE the first time around (no delete, spellcheck or backspace).
• Keeps them moving FORWARD.
• Rarely stop, because the mind is constantly, always AHEAD of the pen.
• Gives them permission to PAUSE and reflect since the PEN isn't as demanding as a blinking CURSOR.

Typing,

• Because most people say that they have horrible HANDWRITING.
• Because writing by hand is TIRING.
• Because they type FASTER than they can write so the words can keep up with the thinking.
• Allows them to do some minor changes and corrections as they go along, deleting and backspacing and also re-reading.
• PAUSE frequently to allow the fingers to rest, so they re-read frequently.
• The editing process does not require re-writing.

I see myself in both worlds,

I handwrite because I enjoy the feel of the felt tip pen on the paper. I like the feel and look of the words on the page.

I type because I can get the words down onto the page quickly. I can move onto the final draft, like this blog post, without having to think first on paper and then redo the entire presentation on the computer.

In CONCLUSION:

My handwriting stuff will never be redone on the computer, it begins and ends its life on the paper. The purpose and intent of writing on paper is not to think, but to enjoy the writing experience. It's not to "make" anything.

My computer stuff won't ever start as a handwritten piece, to be nurtured on paper to be matured in the computer. The purpose of typing a story, or a piece of code, is to think carefully about the story and to "make" something.

THE CHALLENG OF CODE - AI PERSPECTIVES

Google's search is way better today, with it's AI Mode, than it was years ago. It's grown. You can now have an intelligent conversation about what you're working on and most of the time, more than 75% of the time, get solid answers.

Especially if you're a programmer. Need to figure out how to write a function to grab some data from wherever and display it in a table. 5 seconds. How about adding user interactivity to that table. Maybe 10 seconds more. Hey, forgot a security wrapper, maybe a minute to fix this.

The need to have a full technology department with developers, testers, packagers, cyber experts with all the associated management is taking a 180-degree turn.

Of course you need to know what you want. You need to ask the right questions.

And you also need to know if the answer you got is the right answer.

So there's still a ton of homework to be done.

But the stressful work of trial-and-error, research and gradual knowledge building is becoming less painful. It hasn't gone away, it's just easier to have someone, something, tell you what you should be thinking about.

COMFORTABLE BEING UNCOMFORTABLE

I used to teach computer programming - not computer science. Teach students a programming language and how to solve mainly business related problems using a specific programming language. Automate the hard stuff.

And I'd tell my students that this world of programming is constantly changing. I'd tell them that you need to get used to being comfortable being uncomfortable. For as soon as you've mastered something, it's scheduled for obsolescence. And that a life as a software developer is a life of constantly trying to keep your skills current.

20 years isn't a really long time in a career, but it's a good enough span to say that you've matured in that area.

And 20 years ago, there was no AI to speak of. It wasn't in the horizon, at least for those of us writing desktop applications for Microsoft Windows, or server API's on Linux. After a while, you knew enough of the business logic and the actual coding sometimes became quite tedious.

For myself, mastery of a skill was quite disappointing, even though the work prior to mastery, the constant bouts of failure, were frustrating, finally getting it felt like being at the top of a mountain, and there was nowhere else to go but down. 

But soon enough, another hill presents itself and another climb awaits.

THE LOVE OF CODE vs AI

If you're like me, it is not always about the goal, but the journey can be interesting. The well-trodden path can be delightful but you may also have great experiences when you go off-road and challenge yourself.

It took me a long time in my software developer career to discover that there really isn't a "best" way to write something, but there are "better" ways of getting things done. Much of the time I wasted researching, even when I had a solution that worked, is that I kept thinking that my solution is not good enough. I remember learning C++ and thinking that from this point on, I will do absolutely everything in an object-oriented way. I still don't know if that was a good or wrong thing to do. Computers were getting so fast, that for the problems I was solving, it wasn't a performance decision, more likely a complexity one.

And later in my career, my decision, and fortunately it was mine to make and not my employer's, to learn and focus on Python had more to do with the readability and simplicity of the language. No curly braces, yay! No semi-colon's double-yay! But now dealing with tabs-to-spaces ugh! Does anyone use tabs? Weren't they invented for the typewriter? Why are they still on the keyboard?

Anyhoo, writing software can be an intellectually satisfying, cerebral activity. Part problem solving. Part engineering. Part construction. And it's not always about the result. Behind a pretty interface can be some nasty stuff hanging together by the skin of its teeth, just waiting for a breeze to completely fall apart, like a set of Jenga blocks. You don't want to be the programmer who says, "I don't know what I did, but, hey, it's working!"

KNOWING IS EVERYTHING!

I spend a quite a bit of time, for my business, and also for fun, writing code in Python, using the Flask framework as well as Bootstrap. I like working with Sqlite databases. Sqlite does everything I need for the small tools stitched together to make my business semi-automated. We're mostly paperless (or paper-free) and I've always felt that its time well spent automating a very repetitive task, rather than simply slogging through it because the manual process isn't that difficult.

Like who wants to type up employee payslips each month. Even if it's less than 10 employees, a tiny Python app will do the work in a few seconds each month as well as maintain the database.

AI can write that entire app in a few seconds. With a simple prompt on Google, you can get a fully working application in mere seconds.

Try this prompt:

I'd like a Python/Flask application that uses Bootstrap for a nice user interface for managing my employee payroll information and then allowing me to print out payslips each month. Each employee will have a single payment record per month with about five, maximum seven, deductions each month. The payslip should have all that data.

I typed that in and got a ready application in less than five seconds!

Now, if you know Python / Flask, then it's easy enough to read the code generated and make tweaks to your satisfaction and this is far less work than actually writing the entire thing by yourself, but if you do not know Python / Flask, then the only problem may be making changes later. AI will really screw things up.

Oh, and in the prompt above I forgot to tell Google that I really don't like (hate) SQLAlchemy. I'm very, very old school and are super comfortable writing my own SQL statements and tracking them in a module. 

And so the future of software development will be coming up with the right questions to ask the AI engine.

CAUTION

I don't work that way. I normally know how to start and then I use AI (mostly Google and sometimes the CoPilot agent built into Visual Studio Code) to suggest code snippets. Not whole functions, but methods of getting a piece of work done. 

I remember when I first came across the DataTables Javascript library for presenting tabular data on the page. A piece of cake to implement and I didn't care too much that I didn't have to paginate long tables manually - though I must admit, that's a lot of the fun of data management - the complexity. But I needed to upgrade the DataTables links for the CDN I was using and also try to get rid of JQuery.

I hopped into Google, gave it the <head> and <script> sections of my boilerplate page with the code to be changed and the suggested "fix" came back almost immediately.

I cut-and-pasted it.

It did not work. My headers were ruined and there was no styling.

Back-and-forth we went, Google AI and myself. My first response was, "you broke everything!" and AI Mode came back with an apology and a fix.

It took a moment for me to realize that the fix contained the same links as the breakage, but I tried it and, of course, it did not work.

"You broke it more!" I complained again.

And another fix came forward.

I knew what was wrong, and what needed to be fixed, but I was too lazy and wanted generated code so that I could cut-and-paste it in. All I needed to do was to head over to the DataTables home page, see the template links well posted for Bootstrap v5 and Bob's your uncle!

Which is eventually what I did. The back-and-forth with Google AI Mode was not looking like it would come to an end.

CONCLUSION

Therein lies the problem. AI can generate the code, full apps, full classes and functions or simply code snippets.

But you still should read them, top to bottom, make sure you understand what's been offered, add some of your own character before you commit.

Knowing that it is guaranteed that one day, you will have to poke your head in the nest and pull a couple of branches, or twigs, out making sure you don't spring a leak.

And it may be impossible for AI to clean up as I found out. It may get into a numbing cyclical brain freeze and you're forced to do a complete reboot. 

 

 

 

 

my iPad Air 11-inch

How often do I use my iPad? Why did I buy it when most of my time is spent in front of a desktop? I don't work out of the office much, but I should.

And here's the reason why.

MY SETUP

This will be totally written on my iPad Air 11-inch with the M3 chip.

Those are the specifications, quite nice. I have the 512 GB version which is overkill based on my past experience. My previous iPad Pro 11-inch had 128 GB and I rarely used 50% of the storage.

Why did I upgrade from my 2020 iPad Pro?

• The battery life was dwindling.
• It was too heavy to carry around with the Magic Keyboard.
• I thought that it was too close to my MacBook Air (a laptop) and I needed something closer to a tablet. Not a laptop, not a phone.
• I dreamt of writing and programming from anywhere, without having to carry my laptop.

CONFUSION ALL AROUND

My old 2020 iPad Pro had a value of over $300 according to Apple, not worth exchanging it. So I handed that down and went shopping. I didn't know what I wanted, but it needed to be significantly different from my MacBook Air - which is stunningly awesome.

First, I took home the iPad Pro 11-inch. Yup, I know, same thing but without a Magic Keyboard. The specifications of the 2025 iPad Pro 11-inch are actually quite incredible. Thinner than the Air, lighter than the Air. Faster than the Air. And Oh, more expensive than the Air. By a lot.

I used that iPad for a day and returned it. It was too close to my old setup which I wasn't using and the cost of getting back to the start line wasn't worth it.

And so I decided perhaps I needed a larger screen. The 13-inch iPad Pro. And so I got that one. No Magic Keyboard also.

But the 2025 iPad Pro 13-inch was even closer to my MacBook Air. Same screen size, but less functional. No keyboard meant that I needed to buy one eventually, but even just handling it around the home, I found it difficult to just pick up, sit anywhere and start working.

So that went back to the Apple store as well. Next up, the iPad Mini with the A7 chip. This is the one that also uses the Apple Pencil. 8.3 inches diagonally. The specifications on this tiny, light, feature-packed device is unimaginable. This is a full computer, more powerful than some older desktops, in the palm of your hand. Capable of running my Sketchbook drawing app easily, as well as smooth, clear, crisp video playback. Using the Apple Pencil with this device is like holding a small notebook. While the glassy screen is not pleasant to write on, that can be fixed by buying a Paper Like screen protector, or changing the nib on the Pencil.

And guess what. After a couple of days, that was also returned. I have a BOOX Note Air 3, 10.3 inches diagonally and a Supernote Nomad which is 7.8 inches diagonally. So it really didn't fit in my workflow. For handwriting, the BOOX and Supernote are light years ahead of Apple's devices. But for Internet content, for programming, for writing with a keyboard, the MacBook Air takes over.

iPad Air M3 11-inch

After some hemming and hawing, I decided on a similar 11 inch iPad, but without the keyboard, and not the Pro. I got the iPad Air M3 version, with a generic case, and then I bought the Logitech Keys to Go 2 portable keyboard. I had the previous iteration of the Keys to Go, which I found not so good for long typing sessions.

And so, as I write this on my iPad Air 11 inch, M3 device, using the Keys to Go, it's still NOT the MacBook Air, but I think I could get used to it.

I'll spend lots of time on this device and see if my workflow improves. For sure the iPad has some advantages over the MacBook such as, portability, the Pencil, drawing apps and video playback.

And I think, just after one page, the typing experience may not suck as much as I originally thought. I've used it to do some programming on my Raspberry Pi which is running Code Server, as well as SSH to a Linux box and also write and debug some scripts. I have some work on PythonAnywhere, and for that, all I need is a browser, and Safari on the iPad works well.

I've heard a lot about iSH and a-Shell, but I don't need to turn this iPad into a Linux device. I have enough of those. And my MacBook Air with the Homebrew framework is as close to Linux as a Mac can get.

Do You Remember...

... the twenty-first night of September?

Literally a BANG! That's how the writing year started. So gung-ho! Much to do and say.

And I hit the blog wall early, in March sometime.

Meanwhile, my paper journal was going strong. Without fail, a page every morning. Almost robotic. Up at 6 AM, write for about 30 minutes. Then off to the bike and treadmill.

I just checked. The 17th of March was my last entry. Almost six months ago. Not even September.

My will to write anything just is vanished. There was lots of stuff to say, but I just didn't have the willpower to write it down. I kept it swimming around my noggin.

READING INSTEAD.

So I took up reading. And my reading life was excellent. A couple of books a month, borrowed from the Toronto Public Library. Mostly mystery books. Ken Follett. David Baldacci. James Patterson. Wayne Dyer and Rick Rubin. And now I'm really into Karin Slaughter. I'll be digesting her murder mysteries for a while.

The James Patterson, David Baldacci series were really good. You can anticipate their writing style. And I hooked onto those two late last year. They pulled me through August 2024 right up into March. 

Waking up. Writing. Exercise. Reading. And Repeat.

That was the prescription and it got too routine. Too fixed. I got nervous when I didn't get on the treadmill, or the elliptical.

Sadly my treadmill gave up early this year. And so I've stripped it down to its bare bones. I'd even bought spare replacement parts for it since the belt was hanging loose.

BIKING

And my motorcycle's been crying for attention too. I sold my Kibo K250, for almost the same price I got it a couple of months before the price dropped. And then sunk 1.25M shillings into a KTM 390 Adventure. Calling it an Adventure is a bit of a stretch. I've already dropped the bike at least three times. And twice in the driveway.

The bike is a joy to ride on the highway, but it's slippery on dirt roads. Must be the stock tyres which I'm getting changed out tomorrow - Monday 8th September. And then I'll try my hand at dirt again. Boldly.

The bike does not like doing groceries. It was built for distance and so later this year, I may have to stretch it out a bit, head over to Namanga on the Kenya/Tanzania border. Perhaps around Mt. Kenya - which I did with the Kibo should be fun. And then, the awesome trip to Mombasa. This time fearlessly on Mombasa Road.

WORK

And then there's work. It there, chugging along with people chugging right along with it. There's been some progress, but there could be more.

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. No truer words were ever spoken. Because if I don't initiate programs, then the status quo will slip into the status prehistoric. And I'm not joking.

DRAWING

I have tons of tech now. I can't count the number of headphones, both over-ear, on-ear, closed earbuds, open earbuds, bone conducting earphones. And I have a BOOX Note Air 3 black and white e ink tablet as well as a Supernote e ink tablet. And a shiny new iPad Air 11-inch. The one with the M3 chip inside. This time I did not get the Magic Keyboard which I used very little of when I had the iPad Pro.

But I'm enjoying Adobe Fresco. It may overtake Sketchbook, which has been my sketching buddy for a really long time.

I find that I enjoy concentrated detailed work. This reminds me of nights spent in the university's studio, hashing, drawing details on vellum, inking over pencil for hours. Drawing perspectives accurately. Setting them up, pencilling them in. Finally inking and shading.

Nowadays, I sketch for about five minutes and I'm tired that the drawing isn't even finished yet.

Must be the same with writing. Write, write, write, write and then get lost. Don't know where I started, and don't know where I'll end up.

BACK TO ... READING

The Wayne Dyer books were instructive. I knew, or rather I sensed, the content. Taking control of one's life. Stop being a victim. These are bold statements, but practically meaningless without the experiential component. 

Nobody's really in control of their own lives. There's the law. The police. Your family. Your own body works against you. But the insight in the book Erroneous Zones had to do with how feelings arise from thought. And how thoughts arise from words.

And how we make up our own feelings, separate from what reality is.

Finally, how FEAR is the result of the entire process.

His other book, Pulling Your Own Strings, focused on a similar theme. Being a victim.

The end of all that is fear. Not the fear of being killed, or being maimed, or being hurt. But the fear of ridicule, of condemnation, of being ignored. The fear of being made a nobody. Worse than being hurt physically.

I heard a Maya Angelou's piece on never getting angry or bothered. 

Again, words, but one thing stood out. A simple sentence that applied seems to make a lot of sense.

It's not about ME. It's about THEM.

When someone's being rude, offensive, loud, dismissive, objectionable, obnoxious, angry or whatever. It has nothing to do with me.

Maya Angelou makes a distinction between reacting and responding. When you react, you didn't think. You allowed your fear to take over. When you respond, you waited. Took a breath. Turned the words back to the speaker. And the thought did not develop into a feeling.

LIVING MINUTE BY MINUTE

The summary of all of this apathy, all of this lethargy, the pointlessness of it all, and seemingly endless humdrum of the same thing over and over again, to the point of mindlessness is that each minute needs special attention.

Like running a marathon. I know that thinking about the start line at the beginning of the race is not a useful thought. We're told to concentrate on the next step and get that working.

There are too many things unfinished that need to get done. But the scope of all of them seems too daunting to start any of them. I cannot see where I'm supposed to be going, or how to start. What do I pick up first, and what do I do with it.

Past failures come back to mind. Remember when you tried this, it didn't work. What makes you think it will work this time?

The point is to stop worrying about what will happen. If you stop in the middle, confused, then you stop.

Print the tax papers. Get the broom and start in one corner. Open the page and write a few lines.

Like what I did this morning. Who knows, it may go somewhere.

The Art of Code

OK, perhaps not the Art of Code, but rather the Confusion of Code.

You've heard the saying, "there's more than one way to skin a cat," well, it's true.

There's more than one way to wash the dishes, there's more than one way to cut the grass, there's more than one way to go to the shops, there's more than one way to sing a song (and more than one song to sing), and more than one way to build a house.

But you may not have heard that there’s no perfect way to do anything. And chasing perfection is a hopeless cause. Beauty, that thing that is in the eye of the beholder doesn’t exist, because there is no real beauty. It’s in the eye of the beholder.

Analysis Paralysis

The state in which you are stuck, studying various options of attack, never taking a step, in case it’s the wrong step. You end up knowing a hell of a lot. But get nothing done.

Meanwhile Orville and Wilbur have tested at least twenty prototypes and are inching ever closer to something workable. Even though it took taking four steps forward and three back.

Just Skin the Cat

I have written a lot, a lot, of really bad code. Whole systems in one block. Code running for pages that I cannot even remember where anything is. And once it’s working, I cannot even move a line. I’m scared the whole thing will come falling down. Like a Jenga game.

Then I learned about functional programming and everything was a function. The worst thing that happened to me was learning Object-Oriented programming. Everything, absolutely everything became an object. And I’ve never practically used it. I’ve used objects, written by other programmers, but my coding is not that organized.

It’s been a career of five steps forward and four steps back. Imagine how far I would have gotten if it were not for the constant distractions of a “better” way. A “better” programming language. A “better” design pattern. A “better” toolbox for more efficient programming. A “better” user-interface design module. A “better” coding, integrated development environment. A “better” operating system for deployment, go mobile, forget desktop, go web, forget mobile. And oh, don’t forget to learn Ajax and Angular while you’re at it.

Ouch.

After a career that spans a minimum of 22 years of coding, I’ve narrowed my focus. I’ve zoomed into a corner of my expertise that may not be marketable, but I can actually feel myself growing. I feel my bones stretching and my hair tingling. And my chosen poison for now is Python and Flask and Bootstrap. Supported by SQLite (for small projects) and MySQL for the slightly larger ones.

A few years ago, I stopped paying attention to what was the latest and the greatest. The programming tools of my early career are probably not in use any more, and the ones I’ve chosen are popular, but there are far too many developers more skilled than I am. But what’s happened is that I can now focus on the work, and not learning.

I no longer stop and say, “well, I don’t know if I know enough and whether my approach is the best one, I don’t want to continue and find out fifty miles out that I was on the wrong path and have to go back fifty miles to try and figure my way out.”

I just go.

And guess what.

Fifty miles later, I do say, “oops!”

And I jump onto the Internet, where all knowledge is available.

And someone tells me what an idiot I am, and that they cannot believe it took so long to realize that I took the wrong road. And that I should go back to school and get some formal instruction before venturing near a keyboard.

But I don’t.

Because I’ve built something.

And it works.

And I’m no longer afraid of tearing it down, because I’ve learned one more thing. That new knowledge would not have come to me if I sat and did nothing. It only came to me from the pain of the miles down that path.

And I refactor.

And the world is all good again. Until I learn something else. But that new thing needs to be worth my time. Not simply because it’s the better way to do things. But because I want to do it.

My Python apps were not the most beautiful. Oh, I’ll admit that. There was a lot of pain and gnashing of teeth and my code ran on for miles, like a party where nobody knows anyone else. My idea of modular was dividing stuff into individual files.

Like that helped. My IDE then had every single file opened in too many tabs, too small to even see the name of the file they contained.

And then I ran into Application Factories. And the rain stopped, clouds cleared, and the sun shone bright and golden in the clear blue sky. And the word modular now made sense in a functional way.

Believe me, the hard work needed to be done.

The Skinned Cat – Now What?

There are still some things that I won’t do. Resisting the urge to follow the crowd. Everyone’s left the party and they’ve gone to visit SQLAlchemy and Flask-WTF and Flask-Login and so many other fancy-shmancy libraries that are supposed to make your life easier.

The old me would have abandoned what I was doing and followed the crowd. 

It’s tempting, nearly everyone’s gone that way. But I don’t ever want to be that superficial guy who knows 5% of a hundred things. I want to know 500% of just a few.

It may take me a lot longer to skin the cat. But my heart now feels the beat of intimate knowledge. And while I may not be employable, because I cannot answer all the interview questions, my little confused apps look at me like proud children.

COMPUTER PROGRAMMING

MINDFULNESS

Meditation is a conscious focus on the present moment. When you meditate, you clear your mind, so to speak, but you are paying attention. The word is “awareness.” When you are consciously aware, you are in a meditative state. Unlike when you are unconsciously aware.

This is the reason why a lot of mindfulness meditation practices focus on an object, like a mantra, or more commonly, the breath. During mindfulness meditational practices you sit quietly and focus on the breath. It is normal for the mind to wander and get lost in thought. This wandering happens automatically, and when you notice it, when you become aware of it, you can bring yourself back to focusing on the breath.

Meditation is a good way to de-stress the mind which is constantly in thought. Especially negative thoughts and by focusing on an object, like a mantra or the breath, you momentarily stop the monkey mind from negative thought and emotion.

WRITING

Writing can also be a means of meditation if focussed on a single topic. For example, descriptive writing that is unstructured can be useful. Take the following paragraph for example:

Brown table, glass top, indicative of thought and a fireplace filled with logs becomes light and fuelled by, lost thoughts, carpeting is not good but a floor which is on the way to doors that open and close which is the reason why reason exists if only to become the thing that once was. However, it should be noted that even while you sit and browse as soon as things become overly complicated and the words structure themselves, you can chair the objection to the ceiling in order to remove the process that was getting to be very structural. In this case, you are not noticing but following even if the path takes you to a place that you are not familiar with, as the music plays so do you also play.

For a moment you’ll notice that there was a bit of structure, and I tried my best to remove it. That’s because we are used to formal sentences and coherent and correct thinking and writing garbage is not normal. It’s difficult to write garbage and it takes practise to fall out of the obvious.

PROGRAMMING

Computer programming is the language of computers. Most of us use them for productivity purposes, like this article I’m writing. But just like writing or breathing, computer programming can be mindful. Small exercises which are defined to do small tasks and focus on a specific part of the language. In fact, some of the computer programs we use daily have built-in programming facility. Programs such as Microsoft Excel offer a platform for data science and can be used to practise mindfulness. The trick is knowing what direction to take.

Personally, I prefer the Python programming language. A simple language that is amazing for data management programs. It’s now being used for artificial intelligence applications which consume a lot of data. Artificial intelligence applications exist on top of huge data stores. The sifting, sorting, analysis or ordering and presentation of this data is quite complex and one of the features of Python is to free the programmer from the complexities of the computer language allowing them to concentrate on the problem.

So here’s an example. The following is code to open a file:

f = open(‘file.txt’, ‘r’)

Once the file is opened, we can read a line in the following manner.

line = f.readline()

Now that we have a line of text, we can see how long it is by:

line_length = len(line)

Here’s an exhausting method of counting all the letter “a’” in the line:

    
counter = 0   
for letter in line:
	if letter == ‘a’:
    	counter = counter + 1

That’s an example of a “for” loop. A loop is a very common construct in computer programs. It simply iterates over something. In this case, the instruction is to inspect each letter in the line and check to see if it’s an “a.” If it is an “a” it increments the value of the counter.

While this isn’t how professional programs are constructed it is normal to write these small pieces of code for the casual software developer. Interestingly enough, modern computers have made it possible for the novice who’s interested in computer programming to write code. The speed of modern computers compensates for the lack of optimization of the code. 

It is, in fact, optimization that causes analysis paralysis. Overthinking and wondering if what you are doing is structurally correct. As a developer that was my biggest hurdle to overcome in my job, always thinking that there was a better way and so stuck at the start and not moving until all the analysis was done. I think I’m passed that part, for what it’s worth, and the only thing I can say now is while I’m more productive, I learn a lot from constantly going back. But it’s a better position to be in than not moving at all.

On one hand it took Edison 10,000 tries to arrive at a commercially viable light bulb, so the story goes, but he’s also the same person quoted as saying he respects the person with a single idea who gets there, than a person with a thousand ideas who does nothing. Edison was really referring to getting up and getting things done rather than sitting idly thinking about doing things, that action is preferrable to inaction.

CONCLUSION

In the search for calm and meditation, a place of quiet where the mind is not constantly worrying, the act of doing something gets you a long way. If, like me, you are detail-oriented, analysis paralysis can hinder movement. But the fear that getting up and moving without planning may lead you down the wrong path is not necessarily true. You discover that all paths lead somewhere and after trekking down the wrong alleys, you soon learn to figure out how to correct your direction. Computer programming, whether it’s done in Excel, or Python, or even those complex programming languages like C can be a way to learn how to problem solve and focus the brain on writing and logic. Much like focusing on the breath or a mantra.

MANAGING TO-DO LISTS

This could be the millionth time I’ve written about this topic, which then begs the question, do I know what I’m talking about? And also, why all this chatter about to-do lists?

Do you believe in making lists? Not like believing religiously, but you think that they are useful tools for managing your work? Not grocery lists, which ensure that you don’t forget the milk that you went to buy. But a list that says, here are the things you need to get finished.

A to-do list is a curious thing. It's supposed to present a list of the obvious, because your short-term memory cannot be trusted to control what you need to do in a prioritized manner. Remember, it’s not a grocery or shopping list, it’s a list made up of stuff that you need to get done. 

For example:

    • Discuss terms of surrender with lawyer

    • Write 1000 words for blog by 1:00 PM

    • Buy gift for boss’ birthday – remember he does not drink

    • Call mechanic and settle payment

Now, that’s a do-able list. My problem is that if that’s what my list looks like on Monday, by Friday it will be twelve items long. Here’s how that will happen. I may do two of the items on this list on Monday, but on Tuesday, I’ll add four more. That’s six. Of the six, I’ll get two more done and on Wednesday I’ll add four more. That’s eight items on the list by Wednesday. And so on.

By the end of the month, the list is pretty much useless. There are too many things and there’s no sense of what should be done first and what should be done next. Another habit of mine is that I tend to not finish what I start. So, the list may have indented sub-lists. Here’s what the mechanic list item will end up looking like.

    • Call mechanic and settle payment.

        ◦ Called Monday @ 1:30 PM, we couldn’t reach an agreement on the brakes.

        ◦ On Tuesday, mechanic said I could use cheaper tyres – we agreed.

        ◦ Mechanic found something behind the carburetor, won’t be getting the car this week and the cost may go up.

        ◦ Settled on a payment plan

And that’s even shortened. When I called the mechanic about the tyres, he may have told me he’d get back to me with a list of possible good, but cheaper, tyres that I could use instead. And so the tyre part of the list indents again and goes off into deep space.

THINKING ON PAPER

It’s a digital world and we live in front of screens. Some of us type fairly productively and so it’s easier than handwriting. And that’s also part of the problem. If the list was on a piece of paper, editing it and adding spurious stuff wouldn’t be so easy. I used to keep a small (smaller than A6) notebook specifically for jotting stuff that I would normally forget. Because it’s handwritten, there’s a huge economy of words, you don’t write down every word, only a few words that will jog your memory when you see them.

And you cannot insert easily on a handwritten list. You may be forced to rewrite the entire list at which point you will edit it and not copy over stuff that doesn’t seem to be moving.

However, on a computer (and I use Microsoft OneNote) it’s too easy to select the entire last list, copy it and then paste it to your new page on a new date. You can then track items that live for the longest time.

The physical, manual, slow process of handwriting is a curse and a blessing. You cannot sort or organize your to-do list without having to rewrite the entire list. And so you are encouraged to make sure that the list isn’t so large, because you will have to shuffle things around. More importantly, you struggle to keep it to a single sheet of paper so that you can see everything at a glance. What this means is that when you have new stuff to go on the list, you have to remove some other stuff. You simply cannot turn the page and continue. If you do that, completed items get in the way of items that are in progress. But having the list on paper and being forced to rewrite the entire list when you are shuffling, or adding, or deleting is a formal sort of review. At some point you’ll have written that you need to finish a particular item sooner than later. And week after week it keeps cropping up. After you’ve physically written the same item, in the same prioritized position a few times you should start feeling defeated. Disappointed. Frustrated. And you refuse to put it back on.

TECHNOLOGY MEETS PAPER

Introducing E Ink. This is the same technology used by black-and-white digital e-book readers and now they’re making notebooks out of them. This is super interesting technology but it can easily also be abused. I own two of them, a BOOX Note Air 3 B/W and a Supernote Nomad. Google them. I bought the BOOX towards the end of 2023. The first device was a colour one, which I returned disappointed mainly by the battery life – my paper notebooks don’t need to be recharged so I didn’t want to recharge this notebook more than once a week. I returned the colour one and got a black and white one which was much, much better on battery life. When Ratta, the company that makes Supernote Nomad (and the new larger A5 Supernote Manta) released the Nomad, I bought one. Had I bought the Nomad first, I never would have bought the BOOX Note Air 3 B/W.

These E Ink devices are not cheap, but they are excellent for portable journalling and note taking. The batter life is measured in days, not hours, and especially the Nomad has a surface that’s really close to paper. Not exactly like paper but close enough.

My lists are now in the limbo world between paper and computer. Only time will tell how long this lasts.

PORK SCRATCHINGS – DOUBLE COOKED

After a gazillion trials and errors, I think I’ve finally arrived at an acceptable recipe for pork scratchings.

Pork scratchings are made from pork skin with some fat on it. And sometimes pieces of actual pork meat.

Then there are pork cracklings which are actually like scratchings, but closer to pork rinds.

Step 1:

Anyway, enough of the theory, get some pork skin and clean it, scrape it, and if there are parts with too much fat or too much meat, remove it. But don’t take all of it off leaving only the skin.

Step 2:

The next step is to wash thoroughly.

Step 3:

After washing thoroughly cut it into pieces roughly 1-inch square pieces and then put them in a pot. This is the pot that I use, for the entire process.

Step 4:

Season the pork with salt. Salt sparingly, the fat will really absorb all the salt and if you put too much you’re likely to get a scratching that’s too salty. You can also add a little pepper or any seasoning you want.

Step 5:

Add water to cover the pork in the pot, say to about 1-inch. I know, I know, seems like overkill. But in this recipe we’re going to completely boil the pork.

Step 6:

Put the pork on the stove, turn it up, cover the pot and wait till the water’s completely gone. Boil baby boil. I normally use about 1kg of pork skin with fat, and it takes about an hour to really boil out all the water.

Step 7:

Once all the water is gone, and the skin is really soft, turn down the heat to very, very low. The fat on the skin will start to render. Be careful, if the stove is too hot the process may proceed too quickly. You don’t want to cook the skin now, just render the fat so start stirring, and keep stirring the pork in the pot. Stir, stir, stir and you’ll see the fat start to accumulate at the bottom of the pot.

Step 8:

Once most of the fat is rendered, the skin also starts to lose moisture and slowly start to turn from a pinkish colour to white. The surface of the skin starts to crispen and bubble. When that happens, it’s time to take it off the heat and let it cool. Don’t forget to turn off your stove.

Step 9:

Cooling will take about 1 hour, during which time you can salivate over the deliciousness that is drawing ever nearer. Or you can take a walk and contemplate life’s complexities, the mysteries of the universe or what actually causes aging. That should take about an hour, by which time the pork fat has cooled.

Step 10:

Remove the pork from the rendered fat. Use a sieve to make sure you’re not scooping all of the fat out of the pot. Depending on how fatty the cut of pork you bought was, you may not have a lot of fat left at the bottom, so I normally add some oil. I prefer to use lard, but I have also used olive oil. Be generous, don’t skimp because you want the pork to be completely covered in the next step.

Step 11:

Turn your stove back on and put the pot with the oil back on it. To speed up the heating process you should cover it. Make sure you get a really nice rolling boil. While that’s taking place, use a fork to separate the pieces of pork. They tend to stick together as they cool and cooking them as a huge lump won’t be successful. Check the pot, don’t leave it unattended. Make sure the oil is nice and hot, a rolling boil.

Step 12:

Now, this is the step to be super careful. You’ve been warned. Put the top of the pot carefully to the side, do not attempt to put the pork in while holding the top with your other hand. Now, using the same sieve you used to take out the pork, put it back into the pot. You have about 15 seconds before things go south. As soon as all the pork is in the boiling oil, it will immediately begin to sizzle and crackle. The sizzling and crackling will cause intermittent pops from the pork as the water from the skin expands as vapor, causing the skin to bubble and also to inflate. Cover the pot and hold the cover down. The sizzling and crackling will increase in intensity to the point where it could fly up to the roof! In any case, it is quite dangerous to try this without the cover in place and firmly held down. If you do not hold it down, it will blow the cover off.

Step 13:

The sizzling and crackling will slow down as the water completely evaporates. When you can no longer hear it making a lot of noise in the pot, carefully open the top and begin stirring the pork around. Some will have inevitably stuck, and you can pry them apart. The skin should have developed a nice crust, and any fat left on the pork will have started to also fry out.

Step 14:

Lower the heat when the pork is now only bubbling gently in the boiling oil. Continue to stir making sure that the pork is turning a nice golden brown. Eventually the bubbling will stop, and the pork will have crisped enough. The scratchings are ready.

Step 15:

Turn off the stove and remove the pot from the top of the burner. Carefully, using the sieve, remove the pork from the oil. Make sure you drain as much oil from the pork as you take it out of the pot. Put it in a place, no need to use paper towels, but you can if you want. I don’t. As you take scoops out, lightly salt the pork. Salting while the pork is hot ensures that the light salt sticks to the scratchings.

Step 16:

Let the pork cool and continue to harden. When it’s warm it may still be slightly softer, but it will harden in the plate. Then later, enjoy.

LIFE'S NOT FAIR

LOOKING BACK

George Carlin, one of my favourite comedians of all time, once said that we’re saving too many lives with helmets and air bags. We’re denying mother nature the chance to cull the truly idiotic among us, allowing them to develop to full maturity, where the butterfly effect matures to warp everyone else’s opportunities.

But life’s not about being safe all the time to lengthen your time on earth. If that was the case, life would be a clinical, sterile and boring existence from which the pain (or silence) of death would be welcome.

Looking back at my own life there are too many near misses. Chances where death wasn’t looking close enough and let me get away. By all sense, I should have expired. But I didn’t, I’m here and supposedly a lesson was learned.

Others, however, are not so fortunate. Mere bad luck has killed off an infant who did no wrong other than to be born on the wrong side of the tracks. Forced to dig for a meal in a dumpster, not knowing that there are dangers, and finally when killed by disease, or a predator, unknown to them, idiots far greater than they are living in the lap of luxury protected by those air bags and helmets.

NOT ALL BAD

It hasn’t been all that bad, some very good choices were made, which I did not know at the time. My arrogance got me into a competition where the challenge was to finish a full marathon. Run 42.2 kilometres just to prove to someone else that I could do it from sheer genetic superiority. That was an idiot moment. I survived, finished in slightly over four hours, and the next day was at the local hospital complaining that I’d fractured, or broken, my foot. Of course there was nothing wrong with it, but the untrained feet had been thoroughly abused for over four hours. What did I expect?

That one challenge brought on a lifetime of running marathons. Once that was completed, and I was healed, my memory of the pain and suffering went away, and I, this time, willingly signed up for another race. This time no competition, no challenge. Just to prove to myself that I could do this comfortably.

The results were good, and I challenged myself again and again. Reaching, at the height of my fitness sub three-hour races. I was in my twenties and thirties. Now in my sixties, the pressure and extreme training followed by the totally draining effect of the effort of the run has ensured that I am relatively healthy and fit. A accidental and welcome consequence of decisions made without too much planning.

If I’d taken a different path, I would be overweight, perhaps with failing internal organs from the years of abuse, arthritic, mentally foggy and living a life inside my thoughts. My days spent commiserating and remembering the good old days. Living in the past and trying my best to forget the present and dread the future. As it stand now, I really enjoy the present and anticipate a graceful entry into a promising aging process.

LIFE’S NOT FAIR

I remember an incident in boarding school, in the middle of the night, our more senior bullies took pleasure in waking up our junior dorm. Imagine bright lights on at two in the morning, where it was only a moment ago dark and quiet, they arrive like a thunderous hoard of savages, making noise, beating their chests, banging on our beds, pulling sheets to wake us up. In this instance, they left my sleeping neighbour alone. I remember telling one of the bullies that it wasn’t fair that they woke me up and they didn’t even bother my neighbour. I snitched. The bully quickly corrected this error waking up my poor neighbour, who wasn’t exactly sleeping, but pretending to. He took one look at me, a look that asked what was wrong with me? Why did I snitch on him, if the bully hadn’t seen him, he would have gotten away, even if he didn’t sleep, at least he would not have been subject to the ragging and harassment that was soon to follow.

At the time I was probably thinking that this is not fair. What wasn’t fair? That he was sleeping, and I was awake? What’s not fair about that? Should everyone be inconvenienced at the same rate? If I must be bullied, why then shouldn’t you?

That behaviour continues into adult life. Office politics regarding the coffee machine, cubicle assignments, airline seating arrangements, meal portions or salary and vacation allowances. The general attitude is if I cannot have it, why should you? However, if the coin landed on the other face, and I had the advantage, then I would think perhaps it’s OK. There’s no problem with me getting the corner office, the Christmas bonus, and the company car while you sit in a cubicle and take the bus home.

EPILOGUE

Even after all this time I really haven’t learned anything new. I’m the same person in my brain who was born sixty years ago, and I doubt that I have matured. I may think that I’m not bothered by these petty comparisons, but the fact that I think about them means that perhaps my mammalian brain which still thinks that it’s in the jungles of Africa chooses to fight for its survival. 

There’s no trust and no capacity for sharing. If you have one then I too must have one. Having two would be better. It means that you cannot consume more meat than me, get stronger than me, and then beat me out of my home and take all of my stuff, which includes the mates I have attracted in order to ensure my posterity. For me to win this fight, even an imaginary fight over who gets the corner office or the first fresh cup of coffee, you must lose. And if you hear me talking about a win/win strategy, then be very afraid.

Recap of today - 11 March 2025

TODAY WAS A GREAT DAY

Today was an insanely productive day, from the get-go. My normal routine involves my Morning Pages first, followed by an hour, sometimes 90 minutes, on my stationary bike and elliptical machine.

Then we truly start the day.

I have a to-do list that I use to point myself to where I should start. As a manager, this involves mostly checking in with people. As the person controlling the purse strings, I’m called A LOT. Our business is both property management and farming. Which means there’s stuff to be done daily that needs some sort of cash.

Anyway, today’s agenda was mostly a catching up day. Catch up with the budget. Catch up with the work program. Catch up with company monthly taxes (deadline in Kenya for many employee related payments to the government are the 9th of the month.

MORNING PAGES INSIGHT

It all started at the Morning Pages; I had a revelation.

I started blogging years ago, before it became fashionable. And I always struggled with what to write. I’d have a super bright idea and start writing, and somewhere into paragraph 1, on the fourth or fifth sentence, I’d hit a super brick wall. Interest lost, rambling and not even interesting to me.

The next day, I’d do the same thing. Start writing about something I thought was interesting, but I’d give up. Maybe I wanted to write about my diet, extreme Keto, as close to being a carnivore that you can get. But I’d start by explaining what Keto is, explain the bad things that carbs (essentially glucose) can do to you, and why your body doesn’t need it.

Yawn, yawn.

Then I’d get motivated to write about how my lists (lists of everything) help in in organizing my life. And on the second or third sentence, never too far from the top of the blog, I’d hit another brick wall. This one suggesting that nobody cares about lists, and the audience already knows the basic stuff that I’m writing. About calendars, targets, blah, blah, blah.

Even I’d get bored just thinking about the tortuous effort it’s taking to write.

MORNING PAGES, IT’S ABOUT PAGES, NOT CONTENT

Why are Morning Pages so easy to write. I do it religiously every morning and I actually look forward to it. I can’t wait to sit at my desk with my notebook in front of me and start writing. I remember that when I started writing Morning Pages it wasn’t so easy. I’d write and write and write until my brain got tired. The next morning I’d do the same thing, and it was boring. Julia Cameron says use an A4 sheet and write 3 pages. I’d normally exceed the 3 pages and that’s where the lack of discipline came in.

What happened?

I did a Reddit search on the Morning Pages dilemma. Why are some people struggling and found that I was not alone. Some people struggle with the physical act of holding a pen for any length of time, and they opt to type their Morning Pages. I can tell you, writing with a pen and typing are NOT the same thing. I love writing with my hand, there’s a lot of truth of being more connected with the text you are writing, and the much slower pace is welcome. Your brain is normally a few thoughts ahead of where your hand is, much closer if you’re using a keyboard, but the writing does something special.

It edits since by the time you’ve finished the sentence, you’ve actually forgotten where your brain was going.

The other thing is that I needed to get a comfortable length that wasn’t too short and not too long. Just write so that I didn’t have to spend an hour each morning on the writing, and it wasn’t too short to be ineffective.

I found writers who said that 750 words was the sweet spot. Not for me. For me, 3 pages of A5 (a slightly smaller page than an A4) worked wonders. 

My handwriting is also small, and that led to very dense A4’s early on. The 3 pages of A5 are comfortably done within the 30 minutes I’ve allocated myself.

And here’s where it becomes interesting, since I’m aware of the end of the writing, it actually is way better than floundering on the page till my brain gets tired. No matter how interesting the writing is, I stop at the end of the third page. Even in the middle of a thought.

1000 WORDS

So, I hit on the idea to limit my blog ramblings to a word count. Initially thought 500 words would do it, but that’s too short. And after a bit of trial and error, I ended up where I am now.

So, what does this have to do with the greatness of today? Well, I decided to box everything into a slice of time. If it’s not done, step away and go ahead and move on to the next thing.

My meeting notes were taken and as soon as the time allocated for the meeting was over, I closed it. Didn’t ask anyone to stay and finish the few items that are left in the agenda. I took my to-do list and worked on a couple of items and discovered that my lists were always too ambitious. My to-do lists are like a never-ending list of everything that needs (whether it’s today or next year) my attention. And those items that are so low priority muddle up the list and I cannot figure out what I should be looking at.

Worse still, I cannot remember where I am in the list. So, the list was culled and those items that simply aren’t on today’s radar slunk back.

I took the budget that I’ve been looking at since January (with only a few items which have no meaning in March hanging on) and did a great job.

I also wrote two articles – who cares what they were about, point is, as soon as I got close to 1,000 words, I needed to feel closure.

It is all about TIMEBOXING and not caring about perfectionism in CONTENT.

Death and Taxes

TAXES

Give unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar. I recently heard that taxes in the USA were started as a way of collecting money for the war effort. I should have known that.
 
There’s a consensus that taxes are required in order for our governments to provide us with common services – like the police force, the army, and some social stuff like education and healthcare.
 
The purpose then would be to make sure that nobody is taken advantage of.
 
So, why do we really hate paying taxes? The easy answer is that none of the money that we pay in taxes goes to provide the stuff that the government says they will provide. In essence, we don’t trust the collector of the taxes to honor the promises they made in how they are going to use it.
 
I don’t believe that the government will do anything that they say they’ll do. And since I don’t understand some of the more complex details around the collection and use of various taxes, this is a scam.
 
A huge scam.
 
Taxes and tax laws make up a huge part of life. People pay them without really understanding why they’re there, and I’m one of them. There are levy’s, value-added components, capital gains, property, income, goods and services, adjustments, incremental supplements and I could start creating names that nobody understands for anything that I need to collect.
 
Government then creates institutions to collect, collate, filter and sieve (I’m joking, not), and then penalize individuals on being successful.
 
I can see why some people don’t declare or announce their various successes in business.
 

DEATH

It’s quite unfair to compare death to taxes but the comparison doesn’t stop at the thought that both are inescapable, unavoidable conditions of being a citizen who works and earns money.
 
It’s also the excruciating fear of inevitability that accompanies the thought that one day, I too will die. The fear grows with each passing year, getting stronger and stronger as the body gets weaker and weaker, until, like taxes, death comes along and penalizes you for being alive.
 
And you’d think that with you being dead taxes would end, oh no. When you die, an accounting of your life is done and a final tax bill is inherited by those you leave behind, or by the government.
 
Nobody benefits; nobody wins.
 

DEATH AND TAXES

There’s incredibly no way to survive any of the two, unless, of course, you head over to and live in the Cayman Islands where you can live in the tax-free haven. You’ll still have to die though eventually, but when you do, you may have saved something of your existence on the planet so that those you leave behind can think suitably of you and not with ire and disappointment.
 
Why does the Cayman Islands not tax its citizens and why doesn’t the rest of the world follow? What do they know that the rest of the governments of the world are still to learn? And can we ultimately throw off the shackles of providing the government with a piece of our hard-earned money and still get the services that they are supposed to provide.
 
Has it ever occurred to you as curious how those who work in the tax departments are flush with cash? Food for thought.
 
In any case, following up on the idea of a tax-free (and longer life) heaven, I propose that the government start behaving in a more investing and mentoring frame of mind. I also propose that, just like citizens are penalized, and in many cases for simply missing a payment deadline, that the government is also graded, rated and scored on its use of the funds we provide. The scorecard can then be used to kick out those in government driving the agendas and replace them with more competent bodies.
 
This is all possible, we just need the will to make it happen.
 
And if the succession group fails, then they also get kicked out and new people assume the mantle of managing the people’s money. It is the people’s money after all.
 

DEATH... AGAIN

Finally, I hope, it seems inconceivable that citizens should pay taxes for an entire lifetime, even when they are close to death. I’m sure I’m not the only one that has thought of this, but after a lifetime (say 40 years of paying taxes), the government should remove the IV needle from those particular citizens and allow them to graciously wander in the country that their money has helped to build and not bother them again.
 
After all, they’ll still be buying food, paying for transportation, buying gifts and going on trips. In other words, they’ll continue to spend money without the added burden of continual tax payments. Tax is a burden; it’s in the very word itself. If you tell someone, you are very taxing to listen to, it’s not really a complement.
 
And in any case, we expect that at that level of contribution to the governments initiatives, if someone has lived and worked and paid taxes for a very, very long time, perhaps the reward for the good citizenship is to leave them alone in peace. As I get closer to retirement (well I’m actually retired) it would be nice to be left alone to teach, to write and not fear that I could be thrown into prison when my mind is not able to wrap around the new taxes that are sure to prop up in this technologically sophisticated world we live in.
 
I hope that as I slowly lose the ability to run and chase after money, then my contribution to the country I’m soon to depart from is in the form of the wisdom of age. Granted, not everyone is wise, but that’s a minor point since there aren’t too many old people.
 
Death and taxes are related. It’s possible that taxes cause death, but I won’t go there now. I’ll just leave you with that thought.