Various Contrivances

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 09:41:41 -0400

Finished reading: Despite a gloomy subject, The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker was a delight to read 📚

Having to reset all of my devices allowed for a helpful reset of my systems

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 21:05:18 -0400

Thanks to a passcode debacle, I had to reset my iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch — so I used the moment to start fresh rather than restore from backups. I started with a clean install of each and have been rebuilding from there with an intention to minimize the total number of settings adjustments and apps. This moves me back towards my earlier, mostly defaults setup.

After the initial install, I added a handful of apps:

Day One is still my journal app of choice
Waking Up keeps me centered
The Economist is my primary source for news
Reeder is my inbox for the internet
Micro Social is my all-in-one Micro.Blog app

And then added back most of my portfolio of health apps: HealthFit, Strava, TrainingPeaks, Training Today, and Zwift Companion. TrainingPeaks is only to get workout from my coach, otherwise I’d be happy to exclude it. Plus, I keep getting closer to dropping Strava. I’m only using it these days to keep track of what my friends are up to, not for any of the actual fitness features.

Specifically on the iPad, I’d accumulated many “TV apps”, like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. I much prefer watching my shows on a proper TV. So, haven’t added these back to the iPad.

I’d also accumulated many experiments with home screens, focus modes, and widgets. I’m back to just a few simple ones now with very few apps or widgets on screens.

We’ll see how long this simplified approach actually lasts. I’m always keen to try out new apps and systems. That said, it is nice to have clean, simple setups that further reduce the temptation to stare at screens and fiddle with settings.

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 15:48:23 -0400

Office tension continues to rise as we enter the second month of a broken dishwasher

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 14:29:36 -0400

Finished reading: A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan continues this epic series. Hard to believe I’m only half way through the fourteen book series! 📚

🧘 300 hours of meditation: why do I keep going

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 20:27:28 -0400

Waking Up recently told me I’ve passed 300 hours of practice across just over 2,000 active days. That works out to about 10 minutes a day for five years, which is a small commitment that has compounded into something I care about.

So, why do I keep going? The most honest answer comes from the times I’ve skipped a couple of days: I feel more distractable and less centred. That’s the counterfactual and it’s more persuasive than any in-session feeling.

Beyond the functional benefit, I’m genuinely fascinated by consciousness—what it is, how it relates to experience, and whether attention can be trained in ways that matter. Waking Up is excellent here. The app has dozens of quality series with practitioners who take these questions seriously, and Sam Harris draws from both contemplative tradition and people doing rigorous philosophical and scientific work on the nature of mind.

The harder question, though, is whether any of this carries over. A couple of years ago, I went through some challenging work experiences and found that the equanimity I’d cultivated in practice didn’t transfer reliably. I found I was getting frustrated, saying to myself “but I meditate!”, which really just made the point that equanimity in a quiet room is not the same as out in life.

Over the past year, I’ve been deliberately working on that gap—paying attention to how I respond to frustration, pressure, and distraction in daily life, not just during a morning session. It’s slow going, but I’m noticing a real difference. This work connects well with my ongoing effort to be less distracted by technology, which also requires noticing when attention has been captured.

Everything seems to be coming together. Slowly, ten minutes at a time, but it is. That’s why I keep going.

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 21:50:22 -0400

Project Hail Mary is a very fun movie 🍿

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 13:23:18 -0400

🎵 Hooray, new music from both Wintersleep and The New Pornographers is out this week

Heart rate distribution in HealthFit ❤️

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:26:19 -0400

I like the new heart rate distribution graphs in HealthFit.

Here’s an example from a recent intervals run that shows decent recovery back to Zone 2 in between each hard effort. This helps me make sure I’m neither pushing too hard nor slacking in those intervals.

There’s a different profile for a recent HIT session that kept me in a pretty steady high effort once the warmup was done.

The overall distributions by activity type are fun. Although no one is surprised to see that yoga is less intensive than running or cycling.

HealthFit remains my app of choice for integrating all of my fitness data.

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 17:35:58 -0400

Year of the word

Something is happening. The dam has burst on almost two decades of tightly-managed, coordinated and targeted political messaging. In its place we’re seeing a communications approach that’s more free-flowing, discursive, open and adaptable.

Such a welcome change. I hope it lasts.

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:08:24 -0400

Finished reading: Arctic Passages by Kieran Mulvaney nicely integrates the past, present, and future of the Arctic into a compelling story about climate change, geopolitics, history, and exploration 📚

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 17:42:39 -0400

🎵 Song of the week for my daughter — Wheat Kings by The Tragically Hip from Fully Completely. A Canadian classic!

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 07:32:12 -0400

Finished reading: Count Zero by William Gibson is great. Not sure why I waited almost thirty years after reading Neuromancer to read this one. I certainly won’t wait as long to read the third book of the trilogy 📚

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 16:52:01 -0400

Finished reading: The Prime Ministers by J.D.M. Stewart was exactly what I wanted: a concise and clear summary of each Candian Prime Minister. That was a gap in my knowledge that is now closed 📚

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 09:42:31 -0400

🏃‍♂️ Winter was back for today’s run

Tracking surprise in financial forecasts 😱

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 18:37:12 -0400

As we approach the start of a new fiscal year, I’m thinking through performance metrics and targets for my capital finance team.

A classic metric in finance is comparing forecasts to actuals: take a look at what you expected, relative to what actually happened, and keep that within some tolerance – like 10%. Nothing wrong with this. We want small variances! But, this is a lagging indicator. Whatever caused the variance happened out on a construction site many months ago and is only now showing up in the financials. We can use this to get better, perhaps, at forecasting. It doesn’t retroactively fix the problem on site.

I’ve been thinking through potential metrics to get ahead of issues, measure our internal project communications, and adherence to governance. Basically a metric for how surprised we are each month by financial changes.

First, some background, without turning this into an AACE paper. An important role for my team is the assembly of an Estimate at Completion (EAC), which is basically what we think the project will actually cost by the end of delivery. It includes incurred costs, approved change orders, commercial claims, and trends. Adding these together yields the EAC and there’s all sorts of discipline around them. In addition, the project has a risk tracker that quantifies the likelihood and financial impact of a whole host of things that could happen, but haven’t, yet. The EAC is expected to fluctuate each month as risks materialize, trends and claims are adjusted, and new scope gets approved.

So, my experimental metric is tracking the proportion of a monthly change in the EAC that can be attributed to an item in the risk tracker from the previous month. In other words, our estimate changes because a risk we were tracking materialized. This is much better from a controls perspective than unexpected things happening each month that change the EAC.

I don’t want to get too hung up on “attributable”. I’m sure there will be changes that can only be partially attributed to a specific risk, as well as changes that could be attributed to many risks simultaneously. I’m good with at least a predominance of attribution to something in the risk register. This does, though, require that we have some good version control on the register. So that we don’t just change what it says to suddenly be attributable to what happened. This will be a new step of archiving the risk register each month, since we ordinarily want it to be continuously updated.

Of course, no one expects that all changes would be anticipated. This affects the target to be set. Given we’d be new at this, something like 80% of changes to the EAC this month being attributable to a risk from last month seems like a reasonable starting point. Aiming for 100% right away could drive the wrong behaviour.

That’s my proposal. We’ll pilot it on a few contracts and adjust, as necessary. If the metric is trending well, that gives our forecasts credibility and our executives comfort that they’re well informed. If it is trending poorly, we’ll know there’s work to do, likely through more careful risk reviews.

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 15:11:21 -0400

🎵 Song of the week for my daughter — How Soon Is Now? by The Smiths. A classic alternative song that still sounds great to me.

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 08:44:45 -0400

Go by The Chemical Brothers showed up just in time to get me through today’s tough ride 🚴🎵

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 12:16:14 -0400

How To Stop Jumping Ship

So I propose (years late, many bucks short) we just toss it all in the bin and go back to the beginning. Blogs, newsletters, IRC, mailing groups, and, sure why not, Usenet, go nuts. (The jury is still out on forums, but I suspect they are actually a stunted malformed sapling sprung from the same seed of evil that created modern social media.) These things are time tested, functional even in the face of overwhelming lack of interest from the general internet, and are, most importantly, utterly unbreakable. A specific blog, irc etc etc might disappear, but that won’t take anything besides that one facet of a larger whole with it.

I don’t think this is just nostalgia, though there is some of that. The “old” internet was robust and vibrant in a way that modern sites aren’t.

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 17:47:41 -0400

Finished reading: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller is very well done. Really fleshes out the Achilles myth and brings Greek heros and gods to life 📚

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 18:33:45 -0400

George had a busy day

Default app updates for 2026 Q1

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 12:12:10 -0400

I’m making some updates to my app defaults.

I have three broad motivations:

Although I don’t hate Liquid Glass, it is odd enough to motivate exploring approaches by indie developers. To be honest, I’ve really missed using indie apps, so this is a great excuse to make some changes.
Many of Apple’s apps emphasize discovery too much. I like opening Overcast and only seeing a list of unplayed podcasts that I’ve chosen to follow or opening Albums and seeing colourful album art exclusively from artists I like. These apps are designed for me to access content I’ve chosen, not to upsell me on other things.
Like many others, I’m accumulating some vague ickiness with Apple these days. I’m nowhere near switching, but want to reduce some dependencies. Of course, I’m still using lots of Apple devices and services, so this is a very small step.

Given these motivations, here are the changes:

🎧 Podcasts: Overcast
🎶 Music: Albums for listening and MusicBox for tracking
👓 Read It Later: Micro.blog Bookmarks
📰 RSS: Micro.blog Inkwell, discussed here
🗓️ Calendar: Finalist
✅ To-Do: Finalist

As I wrote, small steps and I’m not making a big deal of this. Just fun to explore some new apps.

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 13:59:37 -0400

🔗 Why the Online Harms Act is the Wrong Way to Regulate AI Chatbots - Michael Geist

Applying the Online Harms Act to AI chatbot conversations now risks reopening the very issues policymakers previously sought to avoid. In fact, it is difficult to see the difference between something posted to an AI chatbot or similar content entered into a search query or included in text message or email correspondence. If proactive monitoring of searches, emails or texts is subject to privacy safeguards, so too should be AI chatbot engagement.

I’m all for smart regulation of AI, but agree that this isn’t the way to go.

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 11:49:45 -0400

Vereda Central. 📍

☕️ Tried a new (to me) coffee shop nearby: Vereda Central. Good coffee!

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 10:45:08 -0400

Great advice from Greg Morris in Noticing, Not Performing

Noticing your life doesn’t require depth. It requires attention.

Once I stopped trying to use my journal as a memoir and just captured daily thoughts, feelings, and happenings, my journal became useful and enjoyable.

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 13:32:16 -0400

🔗 Boredom Is the Price We Pay for Meaning - The Atlantic

But boredom needn’t be destructive. The discomfort of boredom, even the anguish of it, can spur us into flights of imagination, resourcefulness, and invention. It can prod us to seek more absorbing circumstances: a career more aligned with our interests, a partner more aligned with our needs, a livelier town, better hobbies, new forms of beauty and inspiration.

Boredom is the price we pay for a life rich with meaning. Recognizing this makes the feeling more endurable.

Even though my meditation practice helps with this, boredom is still tough to embrace. My best strategy so far is to generally leave my phone by the door, rather than always carry it around. Then, those moments when I’m tempted to pull out my phone for a distraction, can’t be avoided.