A few months ago, I started a fun little experiment. I wondered what it would be like to learn how to write code and fiction at the same time. I’ve dabbled in both over the years, making minimal progress and slowly moving on to things that are, well, easier, at least for me. But its become clear recently that these really are dreams of mine, they are part of who I want to be rather than just skills I want to acquire.
Programming has been part of my life since I was a teenager learning Basic on my TI-99/4A . In high school, I took a Pascal class, which I loved. In college, I chose a computer science class (C, of course) for one of my electives, partly because it gave me access to a sweet lab of NeXT boxes . I enjoyed the class enough to briefly consider extending my education for a couple of years to major in computer science, but decided my philosophy degree was more than enough to launch me into the job market.
The next few years involved more dabbling in this ...
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Learning to Write, part 1From: feeds.feedburner.com
Post Date: 2008-09-13 10:21:06
This blog has slowly gone quiet over the past few months. There is a certain rhythm to blogging that is hard to maintain unless you allow your commitment to your blog to supersede other priorities. The single thing I ever did to become good at blogging was committing to posting at least once a day. Like nearly anything else you want to master, daily effort is the key. I did it for years and truly loved the challenge of finding something to write about each and every day.
Writing hundreds of...
more The political book of the yearFrom: feeds.feedburner.com
Post Date: 2008-09-22 07:00:00
I just finished reading The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation by Steven Gillon. It is the best political book I have read in a long time. If you are interested in recent history and how Washington works, I can’t recommend it enough.
The book tells the story of how Clinton and Gingrich rose to power. It touches again and again on how similar the two men were personally, despite their political differences. The core of the book is the story ...
more The reasons Bloomberg decided not to run (and why he was wrong)From: feeds.feedburner.com
Post Date: 2008-09-21 09:31:16
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg spent the first half of this year deciding whether or not to run for president as an independent. On February 28th, he announced that he would not be a candidate. My guess is he wakes up every morning regretting his decision.
At the time, the choice seemed obvious. Bloomberg is an independent (though formerly a Democrat and a Republican) politician focused on achieving common sense solutions by working with both parties. He is open to the best id...
more Learning to Write, part 3From: feeds.feedburner.com
Post Date: 2008-09-20 20:00:00
A lot of our conversations with family and friends involve books. Whenever someone asks me what type of books I like to read, the answer is always non-fiction, mostly politics, philosophy, technology and business (wow, that is one of the most boring sentences I have ever written). In fact, I usually have a hard time remembering when I last read any fiction.
But then it occurs to me that I have a wonderful son who I’ve been reading with for all of his 13 years. There has never b...
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