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.

1,000 Words

It’s 10:29 PM and this is writing is an exercise to see what 1,000 words feel like writing. I’m writing this to clear a mindset of chronic procrastination on this blog. I normally start writing, and eventually, somewhere in the middle of the writing, I give up.

That’s because there’s no focus. No direction and I’m not really saying anything. I may start off with great intentions, to write about, say, technology. But then I deviate into education, and I decide I need a diagram and then something else to explain that, perhaps a diagram, and on and on. About thirty minutes into the thesis, I simply save the draft, with good intentions. The good intentions to come back to it.

I’m writing this in Microsoft Word and already I feel as though this is an achievable goal. Word’s tracking my progress and so far, I’ve done 135 words. Not too shabby, that’s a little over 10% of the work done.
And it’s only two minutes into the writing. So, it means that I can write all of this in 20 minutes – if I’m rambling on like I am now.

In real writing though, I’d have an outline, and I’d stick to the bullets that I write. But I’d be conscious of the craft of limiting the words to a fixed number and not so open-ended like I normally do. Without a target.

This writing also doesn’t have a content target, it’s not like I’m writing to say anything, other than to get to the other side of 1,000 words and see what that feels like. And I have just passed 262 words, so officially 25% of the writing would be done. For a blog that’s not serious, it means that I can write an article and post it daily.

This test comes off the Morning Pages that I do diligently every morning without fail. Even when I have a morning appointment, I make sure that I sit down for the 30 or so minutes it takes to get the Morning Pages done.

So, if the Morning Pages are so disciplined, why is the blog so difficult to write?

It’s not that I don’t have the topics to write about. I have a ton of ideas and the way the process works shows. I will start writing in earnest and then somewhere veer off on a tangent. The tangent will get me lost in the spaghetti world of nonsense at which point I’ll see that I’ve lost interest in the article I was writing.

Not that I write for myself, I try my best to think of something that I think would be interesting to share. For example, in 2023, I started on the extreme Keto diet – so, so close to carnivore. For a while it was very carnivorish and then I added non-starchy vegetables. I was very worried about the health effects it would have from the loss of some vitamins, especially stuff like vitamin C which is in short supply in meats. And I found out that meat has just enough vitamin C if you’re not eating starches – glucose.

I did a number of articles in that vein and discovered that since the articles were exploratory, they were easier to write. I was thinking along.

The Morning Pages are like that. The unstructured method and the lack of focus on content makes the writing flow. I don’t worry about what I’m saying, I just write. And since this exercise is simply an exercise to get to the end of 1,000 words, I am finding the same rhythm has set. Writing about the act of writing, and then expressing some thoughts on diet while thinking of what I’m actually doing. I have now passed 615 words so I’m well past the halfway mark and on to the zone marathon runners call The Wall. 

When energy drains from the exertion and the glucose levels are low. At this point in a marathon run, you feel like you should walk for a while.

And so it is with my regular writing, this is the point at which I cannot see the end and so I put away the computer and do something else. However, in this case, I know that the end is near, it’s about 300 words near. And that I can do. No matter what I write about, I know that the end is coming and I can publish.
If I’d learned to treat writing as a structured process and not think of it as a creative journey, with no goal and I should try to keep walking until the Muse shows up, then I would have had a better time with the blog. It was however a really long time to see that the business of writing is a business and if I want to get to the finish line of something, I must not only have content goals (which are good) but I must also have a target in terms of the time I will take to write and, in the case of writing, the number of words that I want to write.

Content can be king but it’s an elusive and hazy, foggy, murky companion. A review, for example, of a product that I like can be done in 300 words, if I choose it to be 300 words. Or it can run until I think I’ve said all I have to say about the product. If I choose the 300 word review, then it seems to get done well and quickly. If I just sit down and write about this product that I think I like, the review is never published since I’m never sure that I have covered everything I want to cover.

The goal of this exercise was to write till I get to 1,000 words and see if that length is a comfortable length for a blog article – one per day. It’s now 10:47 PM, so it took about 30 minutes to get to the end of this article. And I must say I think that 1,000 words may be the sweet spot.

THE END (1,027 words)

Happy February - missed targets

I've learned, that when I'm writing my Morning Pages, not to be too concerned about content. It's about the process. The very fact that I'm there, early in the morning, pen in hand, clean page, and writing. 

Along the lines of F. Scott Fitzgerald's quote that, you don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have to say something.

I've never really understood the meaning of that quote, and when I first read it, it was not inspiring at all. Until I ran into the Morning Pages. For serious writers, the Morning Pages are a place to warm up, do some stretches, and let the pen wander.

Because the threat to writing is thinking. Or rather, over-thinking.

And I think when I re-read that quote, it spoke to me and said, it's not necessary that you want to say things, but there are some things that you need to speak out and say.

Nobody may pay attention, but write them down anyway.

Format be damned.

So I now have a schedule, that I'm not keeping to. I started this note on the 2nd of February, supposed to have been posted on the 28th of January, and now it's the 5th of February and my last target was the 4th of February.

Circular thinking.

The new rules for posting for 2025 was an exercise in process - deadlines and words - not content. It's tougher to do than it looks.

So let's try it another way - write until the word count is reached and then publish without too much overthinking.

And that's all for today.

Cardio vs Strength

I don't like lifting weights. In fact, I find the exercise strenuously boring. Lift till the muscles hurt, rest, and do it again. I'm told that after some time, unknown, the muscles not only adjust to the stress, but begin to enjoy and anticipate it.

I highly doubt that.

On the other hand, I was never a fan of endurance cardiovascular (a.k.a. cardio) exercise. It came to me unexpectedly in my university years. People who do cardio are different from people who do weights. Even those weight-lifting, super-muscled, gym rats are not capable of the type of cardio that requires a commitment to time.

Both cardio and strength training are necessary for total fitness. I could not find a definition of Total Fitness that I like, so I'm going to make one up.

Total Fitness is that state in which you are able to use your body fluidly and comfortably, to move around and do physical work.

Not a complete definition, but there are a few things stated that imply other things.

• Use your body = legs, arms, back and so on.
• Fluidly and comfortably = without aid and huffing and puffing.
• Physical work = walk, jog, lift, dig, pull - without huffing and puffing

... and for more than five minutes. Because anyone can work for five minutes and give up.

BORING

Yup, this is why most of us give up. We'd rather be sitting down (not being physical) eating a bag of chips and watching television.

It's much harder to walk outside and occupy yourself with your own thoughts. It's much harder to mow the lawn, water the plants, paint a room, than sit still.

Even though, also sitting still is hard to do. Our minds are too active to allow us just to sit there.

So exercise, and doing all these other ACTIVE things, is boring. And your brain is the driver of your activities, the thing that needs to be assuaged and placated and obeyed. And so when your brain is tired you are ordered to stop doing what you are doing.

To stop yourself from being bored, you need to divert the attention from your brain to your body. And you need to do this for long periods of time. During exercise, I listen to music. I have my earbuds on and I run to the beat of the music, so it's gotta be groovy. No slow grooves, but funky music.

HARD EFFORT vs LONG DURATION

So, sprint athletes have these fast twitch muscles that are strengthened using weights. Long distance athletes have more of the slow twitch muscle fibres. Fast twitch means that they contract quickly, but they also tire quickly. While slow twitch muscle fibres contract slowly, but they also take longer to tire.

I'm more of a slow twitch person, with tons of slow twitch muscle fibres that can take lower loads, but hold them for longer. Rather than high load within a shorter time. 

Because the loading of the muscles is slow and gradual, I can warm up and then stay in The Zone for a long period. I wonder if weight lifters have a Zone? Runners have a Zone. They also have something called a Runner's High. The Runner's High is that point in the run where your body switches to something that can only be described as auto-pilot. Effortless running that's supremely enjoyable.

The Runner's High may show up early in the run, somewhere in the middle, or near the end. Or it may not show up at all. But it's what keeps you getting up and going out again, and again, and again. It's like a drug, you look for it at every run. And once you've had a taste of the Runner's High, you'll want more.

DO CARDIO... AND A BIT OF RESISTANCE

Ultimately, there's no formula for fitness. But for those of us who would see gym memberships as a chore, as a taskmaster's forced diet - something you need to schedule and take it like nasty medicine, then finding an alternative, and enjoyable way to keep fit is a better option.

Running and long walks are perfect. Almost no stress and as your body gets fitter, it becomes easier to do. 

And you'll look forward to it.

You'll wake up anticipating those first steps.

And as your body slowly wakes up in the run, you'll search for The Zone.

Sugar Poison

Excess sugar is not healthy and unfortunately, there is very little on the supermarket shelves that does not have sugar in some form.

All carbohydrates are digested to glucose. Except for the very complex ones like cellulose (a fibrous complex carbohydrate that is not digestible by humans).

So all carbs either end up as glucose in your system, or are passed right through to the other end.

Sugar is essential to life. The blood glucose levels are kept optimal by the body. Normally, the blood sugars will rise after you eat and then slowly decline. People who are fasting will have a lower blood sugar since they're not putting any sugar into their diet during fasting.

And by sugar, I mean glucose. The molecular structure of glucose is a chain of six carbon atoms with 12 hydrogen and 6 oxygen atoms bound to it.

It's called a monosaccharide, because it's a simple sugar. Simple sugars cannot be broken down to make other sugars. Examples of simple sugars are glucose, fructose and galactose.

There are complex sugars, polysaccharides, which can be broken down to make simple sugars. For example, table sugar, or sucrose, is made of a fructose molecule bonded to a glucose molecule. During the metabolism of sucrose by the body, it is broken into glucose and fructose.

At the end of the metabolism of carbohydrates, or complex sugars, we get glucose. Glucose is sent to the cells in the blood where it is used for the various processes that need energy.

When glucose is introduced into the blood, the blood sugar level rises. This is normal when you eat carbohydrates, however, if the blood sugar rises too high, the body must remove it from the blood. 

That's where insulin comes in. Insulin's job is to take sugar (glucose) from the blood and allow it to cross into the cells where it can be used. It also takes excess sugar and stores it as glycogen in the muscle tissues. Once the glycogen stores are full, it then takes the excess and allows it to be stored in fat cells.

When sugar is present, you cannot burn fat. Insulin stops the liver from making glucose since there is enough sugar present in the blood.

While it's often touted that glucose is the preferred energy source for human beings, it's nutritionally light. Also, note that when glucose is present, the body cannot burn any fat. In fact the body only burns fat when there is not enough glucose in the blood. The liver makes glucose by a metabolic process known as gluconeogenesis (gluco=glucose, neo=new, genesis=make).

EXCESS SUGAR IS THE CULPRIT

In our modern lifestyle, we eat when we are hungry. For the most part, we thrive on food rich in sugar.

Ancient humans also ate when they were hungry, but they did not always have food readily available. The normal practice was therefore to engorge when food was available, and then to fast, when food was not available. During those necessary fasting periods, the body consumed the glycogen and the fat that had been stored in the muscles and the fat cells.

However, modern humans eat when they are hungry and do not allow the normal fasting process that would then allow for the metabolism of glycogen and fat to take place. This is mostly because food is available. In addition, most of the food that is available is carbohydrate rich.

Therefore sugar is not the enemy. Excess sugar, by continual consumption to ease hunger, is the culprit?

What should we do? Should we not eat when we are hungry?

This is the dilemma we face as modern humans with sugar-rich food readily available. The normal tendency is to ease the hunger (an uncomfortable state) by eating to satiety.

Instead, what we need to learn to do is ignore the hunger and prolong it to allow the body to move through a fasting cycle. This fasting cycle is necessary to lower blood sugar and trigger the liver into gluconeogeness and the consumption of stored energy.

THE STORY ABOUT FRUCTOSE

Fructose is poorly absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract. It's the liver that has to deal with it When the liver digests fructose, we get glucose, lactate and fatty acids. The small intestine can also digest fructose but most of the work is done by the liver.

Half of the common sugar molecule, sucrose, is fructose while the other half is glucose. So when you have table sugar in your coffee, the glucose part will be transported directly into the blood and then insulin will help it get into the cells, while the fructose part needs to travel a little further before it is processed.

Mostly because of this, fructose digestion favours conversion to fat, either glycogen stored in the muscles or into fat cells for storage, and mostly around the liver. This is why you're more likely to get fatter on high fructose diets than glucose, or even fat itself.

SUMMARY

So, to cut a very long, and complex, story short, here's what we know.

• Glucose is essential, but you don't have to eat it - the body knows how to make it.
• Limit carbs - they are nothing but glucose in another form.
• Try to fast, don't eat when you get hungry, let your body get used to hunger.
• Avoid packaged foods with fructose - especially fructose corn syrup.

2025 - HAPPY NEW YEAR

It's January 6, 2025 and it seems that the new year is aging too quickly. I was supposed to write this and publish it on the same day, one of my resolutions, to get rid of analysis paralysis.

But here we are, 7 days later (because of course, I wrote that first sentence and got stuck) and nothing's done.

And chances are it won't be published today also, but let's see what happens.

Question: why are we so gung-ho about making resolutions at the start of the year? From a planetary, evolutionary, maturity, growth, aging, time-based, or any other base of thinking about the new year, there's no real sense in the excitement. December 31st and January 1st are not special. Really, not at all.

You could make the same resolutions on February 16th, or April 20th, or December 5th, with the same energy, same bells, cakes, balloons and fireworks. Really, you could.

But we get caught up with birthdays, holidays (like Christmas), and of course, New Year's Day. These are special and there's something in the air that you may miss if you don't take the opportunity to make a wish.

We'll get to birthday's later.

I read somewhere that gym memberships go up significantly in January, and then drop off, as significantly, in February. This alone should tell you something.

But then December, with the anticipation of January is really the least productive time. But the retail stores and manufacturers make a boom. Sales are high, prices are seemingly affordable and everyone is buying stuff left-right-and-centre.

A gift for you, and one for me. One for her, and another for me. One for my friend, and one more for me. And so on. It's really an excuse to get more stuff for yourself. And you buy more stuff. It's easier to do this in December than any other month. Why, everyone is doing it, why not me?

Back to resolutions.

I have the same one every year, and I've never achieved it. The resolution is to publish an article each week. That would be 52 articles in the year.

I've never, ever achieved it.

The closest I came was in 2011 when I published 43 articles, because in August that year, I wrote 20 of them. Nine more and that would have been the single year.

So I've stopped making that resolution. If I'm going to be true to myself, it's not achievable. Really, I won't even pretend that I can make it since it's the start of the year and I understand the psychology of New Year's Day. Everything seems achievable - the weight goals, the publishing goals, the financial goal, the career goal, the meditation and personal reflection goals. On New Year's Day, we are all our own gods. Invincible.

But I cannot resist saying Happy New Year, because as rational human beings who love to record and count everything, we are measuring time. And this is a milestone, of sorts. So it's good to see what we have achieved and make plans to move towards something. We are not built to wander aimlessly through life, but to achieve, amass and collect stuff till we die. Notably stuff that can be measured.

So the New Year is a check-point of sorts. We have all aged one year and when we were at this same point last year, we said we'd do stuff and it's time to see how far along we have come with what we said we'd do.

Personally, my health check-points are OK. My career one's need constant evaluation and I don't think the annual review really helps. But it has to be done consciously and frequently. The annual cycle is too long, monthly is way better for me. So my reflection on what's going on happens very frequently and the New Year isn't special for that purpose.

And now that I am retired, my goals are very different. Life has taken on a sense of urgency since there is a very real end-point as suggested by the word "retirement." And some of my closest friends are now also visibly aging and passing away. Dying.

Smelling the roses is a real thing.

So let me stop here, and go and smell some more roses.