Update for 10/9/2016

Posted on October 10, 2016 by Andy

Project updates

  • Math relearning – I didn’t get a lot done on this last week, but I did learn some more about the code I need to write and make a list of the tasks involved, which I’ll try to get through this week. I’m feeling more motivated on this project both because I’ve been working on it and because I ran across an interesting article on Common Core math, which of course led me to other articles, and I might post the wiki article I started a while back for collecting links on the topic.
  • Life maintenance
    • Ulcerative colitis – I met with my gastroenterologist last week, and I’m going to try switching from Humira to Remicade, so that’ll start in the next few weeks.
    • Diet – I got my cholesterol results back from the lab, and everything was in a normal range except total cholesterol and LDL, which were still greatly improved from my earlier numbers, so I’m going to stick to the TLC diet a while longer. I might need to start tracking my food again, because I’m noticing myself getting more lax.
    • Exercise – I think I’m going to have to just set my alarm earlier so this gets done and then deal with whatever tiredness happens.
    • Daily routine – Do you have any stubborn life patterns that resist all your intentions to change them? Bad time management is one of mine. It’s an issue in need of journaling, if I can get myself to do it. I guess I should set my alarm even earlier.
  • Books – I’m waiting for a movie to be returned at the distant library that has the Magic Thief audiobooks so I can consolidate my trips and pick up both the movie and the next book, so in the meantime I’m listening to some short books I can cram into a week, such as Coraline by Neil Gaiman, which I’d never read (how many books does that guy write per year??), and From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which I read as a child but don’t think I ever finished, and I didn’t remember the plot except that the main characters are two kids who run away from home to live in an art museum.
  • Creative writing – The little story Coraline writes toward the beginning of the Gaiman book reminded me of a passing thought that I’m now thinking of turning into a project: writing extremely short stories as an exercise, partly just to get myself used to writing whole stories and partly to experiment with writing stories iteratively, expanding my story blips into longer flash fiction in several passes.

Life updates

  • Politics – I haven’t gotten back into the topic of fringe theories, but I did see an interesting and troubling article recently about how they’ve made their way into mainstream politics. To me it highlights the need for listening, since Trump in some ways represents the frustrations of people who’ve felt ignored, and they’re now more able to speak to each other, so they feel validated, but I don’t think there’s still much listening across political lines, maybe because it feels unnecessary, dangerous, or impossible, but then there are cases like Chick fil A. One of my distant dreams is to be involved in some kind of dialogue organization.
Posted in Blood tests, Books, Current events, Daily routine, Diet, Exercise, Fringe theories, Health, Life updates, Math relearning, Programming, Project updates, Sleep, Writing | 4 Comments

Update for 10/2/2016

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Andy

Project updates

  • Life maintenance
    • Diet – I got my blood drawn at the lab for my lipid panel, so now I’m waiting.
    • Exercise – Nope, none. I think getting my sleep schedule under control would help this, since I’d feel better about getting up early.
    • Ulcerative colitis – I see my doctor this week about my ineffective Humira treatment.
    • Daily routine – Last week I said maybe I should give up on regulating my sleep, but I’m back to disagreeing with that idea, since I don’t like feeling like my life is a mess, and unregulated sleep is one of the main causes. This week I’ll try taking a few minutes at the end of work each day to plan my evening and decide what I’m going to leave out so I can get to sleep on time.
    • Housekeeping – I didn’t end up spending much time on this, but I did make progress on the biggest nuisances, so I’ll consider that a win. I don’t want to put off other projects for housekeeping, but I’ll keep working on it here and there.
  • Wishlist – I might add a couple more things later, but I’m counting my Christmas list as pretty much done, because I’m pooped from all this research. When I make my Christmas list, I’m basically planning for several future projects at once and filtering it all on its funness rating, and it gets tiring. It has, however, gotten me thinking about a topic that’s near and dear to me, a loose collection of book genres I’m calling superbooks, and I figured it was time I posted my wiki seed article on it, which I’ll fill out as time goes on, probably even this week. It’s also gotten me thinking about some of my creative projects, such as writing, which I bought another book for, The Writer’s Idea Book–a set of writing prompts, something that’s been lacking in my collection–so maybe I’ll work on that and some other creative projects soon.
  • TV – Netflix released Luke Cage on Friday, the latest in Marvel’s street-level superhero shows, so I’m pausing my other shows while I watch through that. I’ve seen two episodes, and I’m enjoying it pretty well so far, especially Alfre Woodard, who I’ve liked ever since I was introduced to her in Star Trek: First Contact. It’s interesting to get another glimpse into (a Hollywood version of) a community that’s so different from mine.
  • Math relearning – I don’t want to keep delaying this project, so I’m back to math programming this week. My goal is to get through most of the basic supporting code (setup script, test script, and user interface).

Life updates

  • Church – We celebrated our merged church’s one-year anniversary Sunday along with the 5-, 10-, and 50-year anniversaries of our component congregations. I ended up skipping the morning service because I got up late, but I made myself go to the special afternoon service, which was 45 minutes too long for me, but I did feel kind of inspired by some of it, and our old pastor spoke, which made me miss him a bit.
Posted in Blood tests, Books, Church, Daily routine, Devotions, Diet, Exercise, Health, Holidays, Housekeeping, Life updates, Math relearning, Project updates, Sleep, TV, Writing | 2 Comments

Update for 9/25/2016

Posted on September 28, 2016 by Andy

It’s even later this week, but it’s a good one.

Project updates

  • Math relearning – My unnamed critic is having a very bad day because I have posted my devastating rebuttal! An overly long discussion of how programming can work as an approach to learning, though you could get the general idea by reading the Description and Reservations sections. Now at last I can get back to the actual programming, and my next step is to write some more of the supporting code, though I’ll be focusing on other projects this week.
  • Life maintenance
    • Health – I still have a little congestion, but otherwise I’m back to normal.
    • Diet – My TLC diet experiment ended this week, so yesterday morning (Tuesday) I did my home cholesterol test to see if the diet managed to budge my lipids at all in the face of Humira’s side effects, and I was astonished to find that the results were not only vastly improved from two months ago but, for the first time in at least nine years, were all in normal ranges! I’m going to get a lipid panel at my doctor’s office to double check, but in any case I’ll probably just continue with this diet, though I won’t track it as much because by now I have the gist of how much of what I can eat, and recording every meal and snack gets to be a pain.
    • Exercise – I think exercise must’ve been the main reason my triglycerides lowered, since low carbs were supposed to help but didn’t, maybe because of the Humira, so that motivates me to get back into walking, which still didn’t happen last week. I’m also feeling a little more motivated to settle on a workout log app and start the weight lifting part of my exercise plan, if I can fit it into my schedule.
    • Daily routine – Recording every activity is also a pain, and I haven’t done much with the information, so I’m ending that too for now. In any case, at the moment I’m more concerned with getting things done than keeping a regular sleep schedule, and I’m starting to seriously wonder whether I should care about that at all or just accept it as one of my quirks that I’ll always have this conflict between activity and sleep and that sleep will often lose.
    • Housekeeping – An organized living space frees my mind, so cleaning up my apartment will be one of my projects for this week so I can be more mentally prepared for my upcoming projects.
  • Existential crisis – The issues are still there, but they’ve receded into the background, and I feel better about them, though they’re still influencing my priorities, but in a good way. Whenever I’m troubled, life’s less gloomy parts tend to trickle in, expand my perspective, and improve my mood, and that’s what happened this time again, plus a good conversation with my boss, because we have that kind of relationship.
  • Media
    • Books – I finished The Magician’s Land, which was excellent and satisfying and thought provoking, and it somehow put me in the mood for the Magic Thief series, which I’ve started over because I couldn’t remember the plot of the first book. Maybe I thought of it because there was a certain bleakness to the Grossman book, my illness was putting me in a similar mood, and I remembered feeling the same way about the Prineas book (though it feels less so this time around), and I know I also wanted a story that took place all in one, urban location. Anyway, one effect of my existential crisis has been a desire to prioritize and manage my entertainment more carefully, since life is short and I don’t want to be mindless about it, but I also don’t want to cut it out of my life, because lately I’ve been reminded that stories and music are some of the things that expand and enrich my perspective and bring me out of dark places.
    • Movies – We had our final Star Wars marathon on Sunday with episodes 3 and 7, the latter of which Jeremy’s family hadn’t seen, and I might as well have not seen 3 because I barely remembered any of it, though that’s probably because I’d only seen it once. Jeremy loved the look of 7 because it reminded him of the original trilogy, and my curiosity about the connection led me to the term production design and the fact that looking like the old movies was totally on purpose.
    • Music – I’m collecting piano rock (Pandora station, Spotify playlist) to give me ideas for my improvisation at church, since I always feel in danger of becoming stale. I’ll probably try to get around to learning to play some of those songs.
  • Wishlist – My other project for this week is to update my Amazon wishlist, because this is about the time certain people in my life start to pester me because they like to do their Christmas shopping half a year early. Christmas lists are tricky because I have to think of things that would be fun to get at Christmas that I’m not going to want to buy before then myself, which I know is an extremely first world problem and also feels very self-centered, but I also know it’s annoying to shop for someone when you don’t really know what they’d like, so it’s only right for the recipient to take a thoughtful moment to be selfish.
Posted in Blood tests, Books, Daily routine, Diet, Exercise, Existential crisis, Health, Holidays, Housekeeping, Math relearning, Movies, Music, Programming, Project updates, Sleep | 3 Comments

Update for 9/18/2016

Posted on September 20, 2016 by Andy

The update’s a little later than usual this week. It’s colliding with my math project and some freelance work in the kind of time management trainwreck that sometimes happens to me.

Project updates

  • Life maintenance
    • Health – It’s annoying to feel slightly sick when I think I should be over it by now, but every day I feel more almost normal. I used to get over illnesses in a couple of days, but maybe because of all the immunosuppressants I take for my ulcerative colitis, things tend to hang on for weeks now. At least I still don’t get sick often.
    • Diet – Next week is my home blood test for cholesterol, and after that I’m not sure what I’ll do for my diet, probably still limit sugar and saturated fat but otherwise take a break from thinking about it. That’s practically all I’m doing already. I’ve lost a lot of steam on all this dieting, since it’s not really my favorite hobby, if you couldn’t tell.
    • Exercise – My break from exercise continued last week, despite what I said in my update. It was mostly because I didn’t like giving up sleep, but also because I’ve still felt kind of fragile, with my physical state fluctuating a little more than it usually would. I’ll try walking anyway this week, since next week’s the blood test, and if I somehow get sicker again, I’ll know it was a mistake.
    • Daily routine – My schedule hasn’t exactly been regular, but I did get a lot more sleep last week and work a fair amount on my math project. That’s one benefit of being sick, giving myself permission to sleep.
  • Math relearning – I need a day or two more for the finishing touches, and then I’ll post it and get on with the programming. I want to get some more preliminaries done on that, and then I need to take a break to pay attention to some other projects.
  • Media
    • Books – I finished The Magician King and have started the last book in the series, The Magician’s Land, and by this point it’s safe to say Lev Grossman is one of my favorite authors. I like hearing his characters interact with their fantasy setting. I’ve been debating what direction to take my listening after this–maybe some more cyberpunk.
    • Movies – Tim and I saw Star Trek Beyond Sunday night, which we both liked, though I wished there’d been a little more talking and a little less action like I seem to remember from earlier Trek movies.
    • TV – I spent a good chunk of Saturday watching a few episodes of Dagashi Kashi, an anime I started a couple of months ago–with the last episode by accident, or the latest episode anyway–and now that I’ve seen the first episode, major questions about the premise have been cleared up. The peaceful rural/suburban setting is mostly why I’m watching it, but in my current mood I’m also finding the show’s quietness kind of depressing.
  • Existential crisis – My current mood is a contained but gnawing anxiety about the decisions I should or shouldn’t be making about major areas of my life and the slowness with which I move on everything. It’s been growing over the past few weeks and gotten pretty painful over the past week or so, probably helped along by my sickness. But this kind of crisis happens to me occasionally, though usually less intensely, and I think journaling and some quality socializing will help it shrink.
  • Photography – To end on a happier note, here are some cute animals.

    Taken 9/1. You know, I hardly ever see a squirrel actually eating.

    A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

    Taken 9/19. I’m not sure if it’s gotten the worm.

    A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

Posted in Anime, Books, Daily routine, Exercise, Health, Math relearning, Movies, Photography, Project updates | Leave a comment

Update for 9/11/2016

Posted on September 12, 2016 by Andy

Life updates

  • Health – I was sick last week starting Tuesday–some kind of cold or flu, I think, with a sore throat, congestion, aches, a bit of spaciness, and a fever–and it threw off most other things I was planning to do. The worst was Tuesday night, when I took a nap after work and then spent an hour trying to will myself out of bed. Wednesday was better, but I took the day off of work, and then I worked from home on Thursday to spare people my germs, but that was annoying, so I went back in on Friday. I’m mostly better now with just a little congestion.

Project updates

  • Life maintenance
    • Diet – Two weeks till my home blood test to see if the TLC diet, or my half-hearted version of it, is doing anything for my lipids in the face of my Humira. After stalling for a few weeks, my weight began dropping again last week, which was probably the illness, so that’ll be my diet plan after TLC (not really).
    • Exercise – I gave myself the week off so my sickness wouldn’t get worse. I’ll get back to my walks this week.
    • Daily routine – There wasn’t much of one last week.
    • Housekeeping – After I finish this math program intro, I am definitely taking a week to clean up my apartment. I’m feeling crowded and a bit weighed down, and I think clearing up all the clutter would improve my outlook on life. For me, physical space tends to translate into mental space.
  • Math relearning – As expected, I made some progress but didn’t finish, but I blame the sickness and the ways it disrupted my week, such as giving me an excuse to sleep at odd times. But apparently I’ve decided it’ll take about a year to finish this thing, so one week down, 51 to go!
  • Books – I finished Glasshouse, which was okay but not as fascinating to me as Accelerando. The main character got sick at about the time I did, which did not help me feel better. Now I’m on The Magician King by Lev Grossman, and it was instantly compelling, like the first one in the series.
  • Dusk – Since this week’s update was kind of a downer, here are some nice clouds for you, from Saturday.

    A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

Posted in Books, Daily routine, Diet, Dusk, Exercise, Health, Housekeeping, Life updates, Math relearning, Project updates | 2 Comments

Update for 9/4/2016

Posted on September 5, 2016 by Andy

Happy September! Here’s a tweet from my sister about an article on making a fresh start this time of year.

Project updates

  • Math relearning – Life never misses an opportunity to disappoint my optimistic scheduling expectations, and so despite my diligent efforts I’ll need at least another week writing my math program intro, but let’s be realistic and call it a year. It turns out I have a lot to say about learning by programming, but I like what I’ve been writing, which might be part of the problem. One project management skill I need to work on is scaling back a project to fit it into a time frame while still producing a satisfying result. In any case, it’s turning out I care so much about this topic of learning by programming that I don’t want to move forward with any other intellectual project until I’ve gotten somewhere with this technique so I can use it in some way on those projects.
  • Life maintenance
    • Diet – Lately instead of cooking industriously, I’ve been re-exploring the frozen dinner aisle with my TLC diet in mind, which limits only saturated fat and cholesterol, so it gives me more choices than my doctor’s old recommendation of a low-fat diet that limited total fat, back before he switched to low-carb. Annoyingly, for some of the products, the nutritional info on the box doesn’t match the info in my diet tracking app, so I’m avoiding those brands, which so far are Boston Market and maybe Chili’s. I don’t think I’m doing this diet quite right–not getting quite enough soluble fiber, fruits and vegetables, fat, protein, or even calories–but it’s hard to coordinate all the different factors and find time for food prep, and I’m procrastinating on figuring out a better meal plan until I can fit in some time programming a tool to help me, though probably by that point the initial experiment will be over and I’ll have started on another low-carb experiment.
    • Exercise – I’ve decided I have enough else to do that if I don’t get in my exercise in the morning, I’ll count it out for the day, and so I’ve skipped exercise a few days recently because I’ve slept extra in the mornings, but oh well, I’m mostly sticking to the schedule, and it shouldn’t be a problem if I can get my sleep schedule under control, though when has that ever happened? I do kind of like my walks, since they give me half an hour to let my mind wander, which is pretty much my favorite state of being, and it’s a major reason I walk instead of jog, since anything resembling intense physical activity takes over my attention with all the strain and pain.
    • Daily routine – My task tracking app tells me I’ve gotten almost enough sleep over the past week, just not quite at the right times, and I’ve spent a decent amount of time on my projects, but I still feel dissatisfied and a little depressed about my time management skills. Do other people have trouble getting around to everything important in a timely fashion, or is it just me? Anyway, as I looked at my messy apartment this weekend, I concluded I need to restart my GTD practices, which have been minimal for a long time, so that’ll be coming up in the next week or two. It’s my Steptember fresh start.
    • Clothing – My collection of t-shirts is old and wearing out, so I’m on the lookout for new ones–a few plain ones and some graphic ones, like this Justice League one I picked up from Target. One problem to contend with is a trend I’ve seen in several brands for the bottom of the sleeve to be super short, which pulls the rest of the sleeve awkwardly when I move my arms.
  • Books – I’m pushing myself through Charles Stross’ Glasshouse, which for me had a slow start but picked up in chapter 9, so I can get to Lev Grossman’s The Magician King, which I checked out a few days ago when my turn finally came up in the hold queue. The first book in that series was so good that I’m expecting to glide through this one in a few days.
  • Video games – I’ve been missing Minecraft the past few weeks, so I’ve been listening to the soundtrack a lot, and this weekend I rebelled and played some when I should’ve been doing other things like sleeping. For anyone who cares, I’m on a long trek through the Nether from my temporary starting base to the location I’ve planned for the central base in my network of biome-related homes, which is the point of this world, and I might post an article or video about it someday so you can see what I’m talking about. I also sometimes wish I could get into other games, such as RuneScape, so I can get more involved with the people I hang out with online, but I don’t know when that would happen.
  • Religion – My holding pattern between faith and doubt and my general spiritual inaction have been wearing on me for a while, and my mind is slowly drifting toward the idea of doing something to move in some direction. For now that would mostly take the form of journaling so I can work out what I think I need and what next steps would be most helpful, and I’ve decided to put my morning meditation on hold, since it’s only been helping me in a very limited way, and replace it with some kind of actual devotions.
  • Dusk – It’s not a forest preserve, but I found some pretty clouds during one of my parking lot meals.

    The clouds kind of match the towers.

    A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

Posted in Daily routine, Devotions, Diet, Dusk, Exercise, Math relearning, Project updates, Spirituality, Video games | 4 Comments

Update for 8/28/2016

Posted on August 29, 2016 by Andy

Project updates

    • Math relearning – The explanation of my programming project is getting kind of long, and I still have more to write that’ll take a few more days, but hopefully I can post that this week. This explanation is mostly a rebuttal to some objections to this new direction I’m taking my math relearning. It was fun on Wednesday to have dinner with my antagonist on this project (who shall remain nameless but it starts with J) and learn more about his reservations so I can maximize his humiliation in my public refutation. I know he’s looking forward to that.
    • Life maintenance
      • Diet – My boss was chagrined that I hadn’t read Taubes’ Why We Get Fat, one of the main books in support of low-carb dieting, so I checked out the audiobook and finished it today, and I have to say it’s more compelling than the arguments I see put forward online, though I also want to look more into people’s responses to him. I’d already been thinking of trying low-carb again sometime after I switch medications, and Taubes has made that idea more of a plan, especially since I lost weight much quicker on my low-carb diet than I have been on TLC, though I still have to see what happens to my lipids.
      • Illness – Thursday evening I got the short-term illness that’s happened to me occasionally since my ulcerative colitis started, where I get chills for a couple of hours, take a nap, then feel feverish and lethargic for a few hours, and in the morning feel better, except for maybe a headache, as in this case. Neither my primary doctor nor my gastroenterologist knows what this is, but my boss wonders if the cause could be leaky gut syndrome, which is one of those folk diseases that may or may not be real. I might go to convenient care (a walk-in doctor’s office) during one of these episodes to see what they can tell me.
      • Exercise – The sickness plus extra sleep deprivation that week threw off some of my other activities, and I’m going to blame that for my lack of exercise this weekend, but otherwise I’ve been doing my walks every day. I will get around to more weight training, but I don’t feel much urgency about it, and I haven’t even worked out how to fit it comfortably into my schedule, so I’ve been procrastinating.
      • Daily routine – My sleep schedule was a disaster last week, but of course I’ll try again this week, because while diet and exercise only have subtle effects on me, sleep is the one lifestyle factor that makes an immediate and dramatic difference in the quality of my day, especially when it comes to my mood, productivity, and outlook on life.
    • Media
      • Books – Beggars in Spain was very good to the end, and even though Jeremy wasn’t impressed with the rest of the series, I want to see what comes next, so I’ll be listening to at least the next book. Cassandra Campbell has made it onto my list of favorite readers, especially with her rendition of Miranda Sharifi, my favorite character.
      • Movies – Sunday Tim and I got together with the Keevers again for part 2 of our Star Wars marathon, the prequels, which I remembered much better than the originals. We decided to end after episodes 1 and 2, and next time we’ll conclude with episodes 3 and 7, the latter of which Jeremy’s family hasn’t seen. After the movies Jeremy laid out his complaints about episode 2, which was a much different movie than he wanted to see, and I could sort of see his point, though as a minimal fan I didn’t go into the prequels with a lot of expectations, so the only problem I really had was with the stiltedness of some of the dialogue and its delivery, but Jeremy’s comments made me wonder what kinds of prequels other disappointed fans would’ve written, and I found quite a few (and here are some more).
    • Dusk – My walk on Friday was in the evening, and I decided to do it at forest preserve 3, where a bunch of birds were hanging out on the rocks along the shore.

The bird council of forest preserve 3.

A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

Life updates

  • Car – For about a month my engine had been rasping and rattling, and I finally got around to taking it to my mechanic, who said I must’ve run over something, because a pipe connected to a converter had been ripped up and was letting in exhaust or something. So he replaced the pipe and managed to salvage the oxygen sensor that was in there, so that saved me a bit of money, and now my car is quiet again, and that is one of the best feelings.
Posted in Books, Car, Daily routine, Diet, Dusk, Exercise, Health, Life updates, Math relearning, Movies, Programming, Project updates, Sleep | 2 Comments

Update for 8/21/2016

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Andy

Project updates

  • Life maintenance
    • Diet – After six-and-a-half long weeks, I’ve completed my gluten-free experiment, and with no improvement in my ulcerative colitis symptoms, I’ve concluded that gluten is not the problem, unless I’m super sensitive to microscopic contamination from restaurants, factories, utensils, and so on, which seems to me a flaw in the use of elimination diets for diagnosing things like gluten intolerance. So now I have only one diet running, the TLC diet, and it’s a relief to be able to eat mostly normally again and not worry about being a burden on people, though Heather and Jeremy were kind enough to accommodate me last week at the Star Wars marathon without feeling burdened; and if gluten had turned out to be the problem, as it is for many people, I would’ve worked harder to find ways to live with the diet in the future and not complain so much. And I would like to add that because of this experiment and against all my expectations, I have found a brand and variety of ice cream that can compete with Blue Bell, and it’s one of the few gluten-free foods I’m keeping in my diet–fat-free creamy vanilla by Breyers, which needs no toppings and should be savored in thin slices. Cooking experiments: for the ice cream (no toppings needed, but they’re still allowed!), this chocolate sauce with half-and-half for the heavy cream and with unsweetened cocoa and Smart Balance spread for the baking chocolate, which all worked really well.
    • Exercise – Saturday morning, for the first time in about eight years, I used the weight machines at the gym, with the goal of figuring out the details of my workout, and my muscles are still sore. Now I just need to decide on a schedule (twice a week?) and settle on a workout logging app, and I can get my probably-doomed (since I’m on a calorie deficit) weight training program moving. Meanwhile, to my surprise, my daily walks are gradually speeding up as I get used to the rates I set on my metronome app.
    • Daily routine – Last week one of my main projects was to try to get to bed on time, which ideally is 9:00; and as usual when I really try, I succeeded at the beginning of the week and then pushed my bedtime back further and further as the week wore on; but I’ll try it again this week and maybe learn a little more about what it’ll take to become consistent. Time on social media still eats too much into time for more important things, so I’m gradually cutting it down to the sites I really care about that don’t completely suck me in, which basically leaves me with Twitter.
  • Math relearning – With a more relaxed diet and a renewed attention to my use of free time, I’ve managed to carve out more time to spend on this project; and so to continue the theme of ending long delays, after years of thinking it would happen one day, I’ve finally created a project on GitHub, a place for people to share computer programs they’re writing, and my GitHub project is the programming part of my math relearning project, a program I’m calling Math Student Simulator. So far I’ve posted a brief explanation of the project and one of the scripts I’ll use to manage my code, which means I now have code out in public for other programmers to verbally rip apart like a pack of wolves, so … have at it, I guess! I’ve achieved enough momentum on this project that I’m able to think about it at times when I’m not physically at a computer, which is a state I’ve been hoping to reach, and it makes me think my progress will accelerate a bit. This week one of my goals is to post on the wiki a longer explanation of the programming aspect of my math relearning for people who want to understand why I’m doing it.
  • Movies – I’m watching more of these than usual right now, and the latest was Jason Bourne on Sunday with Tim. It was interesting, and I found I could follow its plot better than I normally can in a political thriller, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting better at paying attention or because it was dumbed down to my level.
  • Dusk – I’ll leave you with these. I went back to the park from two weeks ago and still didn’t get good pictures, but I did get some from the lake in another area of forest preserve #2.

    A different area of forest preserve 2.

    A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

    The lake at forest preserve 2, dusk deepening.

    A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

Posted in Cooking, Daily routine, Diet, Dusk, Exercise, Math relearning, Movies, Programming, Project updates, Sleep | 2 Comments

Update for 8/14/2016

Posted on August 15, 2016 by Andy

Project updates

  • Life maintenance
    • Diet – I finished my dairy-free experiment, and with no change in my digestive symptoms, I’m considering dairy safe. This Wednesday my gluten-free experiment will finally be over, and if I decide gluten’s safe, I’m celebrating with oatmeal, real bread, and a wrap from Chick-fil-A. Then the next step on my ulcerative colitis will be to talk to my gastroenterologist about switching from Humira to Remicade, but I want to know if my Humira is the cause of my stubborn lipids, so I’ll probably wait on that conversation till I test my blood at home at the end of September after being on the TLC diet for two months, which will tell me if the TLC diet helps even with Humira in the way. Last week’s cooking experiment: dairy-free chicken tikka masala, with the heavy cream replaced by rice milk and butter substitute and the yogurt replaced by pureed tofu, and it all worked fine, I’m sure mostly because it’s all covered up by 1/3 cup of spices.
    • Exercise – Wednesday I read about a study that said for an adequate reduction in certain major health risks, we should really be getting something like 90 minutes of exercise a day instead of the WHO’s recommended 30. I’m already doing 30, and I refuse to steal an extra hour per day from my substantive projects, so I’m thinking of getting a pedal exerciser to use at my desk at home in order to work and exercise at the same time. Or maybe I’ll wait on more research. In other news, I’ve learned 123 beats per minute is a good minimum walking pace for me, and about 133 is my minimum pace on the stationary bike.
    • Daily routine – My mornings still feel iffy but basically okay, so now I need to concentrate on my evenings. I’m thinking of making sleep this week’s main project: What would it take to get myself to sleep by 9 every night, and what would that do to me?
  • Math relearning – I’m still working on the infrastructure of my program rather than programming the actual math, but I got a few steps closer to posting something, mostly by sacrificing sleep.
  • Media
    • Books – Jeremy started reading Accelerando, one of my favorite books, and he didn’t like some of Stross’s predictions, so he recommended Beggars in Spain to me, and being a newly minted sucker for trans- and post-humanist fiction, I found it and started listening, and it’s been very interesting so far, with the bombastic action that’s usual in my SF reading refreshingly replaced by philosophical discussion.
    • Movies
      • V for Vendetta – To me pizza and movies go together, so Friday night I wanted something to watch with my pizza, and I settled on this one, which I hadn’t seen, so I’ve been watching it over the past few days, and I was surprised to find that I like it. I expected a character rather mindlessly violent like the Punisher, but what I got was a cultured and gentlemanly British Deadpool/Tyler Durden.
      • Star Wars – On Sunday Tim and I went over to Heather and Jeremy’s place for our long-awaited marathon of the original, unedited Star Wars trilogy, half of the point of which was to introduce Jeremy’s 9-year-old son to the series, though he already knew some of the plot from playing Lego Star Wars. It had been about two decades since I’d seen any of the original movies, and my memory for stories is terrible, so it was like introducing me to them too, and it was fascinating to watch the isolated scenes in my head get filled in with details and woven into coherent narratives.
Posted in Books, Cooking, Daily routine, Diet, Exercise, General, Math relearning, Movies, Project updates | 2 Comments

Update for 8/7/2016

Posted on August 9, 2016 by Andy

Project updates

  • Life maintenance – My schedule still feels cramped from this stuff, but I felt more hopeful last week than the week before.
    • Diet – The last day of the dairy-free experiment is Tuesday (technically today, but pretend I posted this two days ago), and the next Tuesday is the last for the gluten-free one. Cooking: Gluten-free, dairy-free, low-sugar brownies (based on this), which were also low carb because I tend to eat slightly too much of carbs and not quite enough fat and protein, so I used almond flour instead of the other gluten-free flour I bought. If I have to plan my desserts carefully, I might as well make them do work for me. A diet is like a game, balancing multiple factors to reach a goal, and part of my hopefulness last week was that after bumping up a bit, my weight decreased again to slightly lower than the previous week, which makes me feel like all this effort isn’t completely futile.
    • Exercise – I continued to exercise every day last week, walking on a nice tree-lined path nearby, but I’ve noticed that by the end of the day, the memory of those walks feels dreamlike, I think because it’s early in the morning, the setting looks like something from a movie, I’m kind of zoned out listening to whatever’s playing in my earphones, and the other people on the trail pass by without interaction, like ghosts. On Saturday I finally went to the gym to test the idea of getting my cardio by walking there and back and using the exercise bike, which worked well, especially setting my pace with the RockMyRun app, which plays curated playlists of music at whatever tempo you select, though it uses too much data for me, so for now I’ll just use my metronome app. I also started exploring workout log apps.
    • Daily routine – My morning schedule has settled down enough that I can make it to work consistently on time again, and much of it was because I didn’t have to wash the dishes or make my lunch in the mornings because I stayed on top of the dishwashing better and spent some time making several lunches at once, so I’ll try to continue that pattern.
  • Math relearning – I made a decent amount of progress on this last week, but it was mostly reading, so it didn’t feel like much. I did, however, write some comments about the project that I’ll post on the wiki this week. I think I can also post something on GitHub this week finally. And on Friday I had dinner with Jeremy, and our conversation about the book he recently read, In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations that Changed the World, motivated me to keep moving on this project.
  • Dusk – After my dinner with Jeremy, I took a spontaneous side trip to a park I’d been wanting to explore, and I took a few pictures to test out different viewing spots and angles, but I didn’t find the sky very inspiring that night, so I didn’t posted them, but maybe some other night I’ll take pictures there that will find their way online. On this visit I was reminded that walking down wooded trails in semi-darkness is a little scary, since I didn’t know what random criminal might be lurking, but I felt reassured by the fact that I was in the middle of a residential area and had seen a police car nearby.
  • Media – I decided to succumb to the Stranger Things hype, and I ended up binge watching the whole thing over the weekend. It was like the movie Super 8 if Spielberg had collaborated with Guillermo del Toro instead of J J Abrams. I was especially impressed with Millie Bobby Brown and might look for more of her work. Speaking of movies, a few have come out that interest me–Star Trek Beyond, Jason Bourne, and Suicide Squad–so on top of our Star Wars marathon hopefully sometime this month, I’ve been making plans with Jeremy and Tim to watch those, which is nice because I’ve been feeling an unusual itch lately to watch something in a theater.

Life updates

  • Apartment – As an addendum to last week’s story about my lease panic, I forgot to mention that I took the opportunity to observe my coping mechanisms, and the steps that helped me were (1) taking action ASAP by calling the apartment office, (2) writing a list of my worries, (3) making preliminary plans for worst case scenarios, (4) joking about the situation in a conversation with Jeremy, and (5) distracting myself with lunch.
Posted in Apartment, Cooking, Daily routine, Diet, Dusk, Exercise, Life maintenance, Life updates, Math relearning, Movies, Project updates, TV | 4 Comments