On Not Writing in 2020

“Shakespeare wrote King Lear during a pandemic,” say the various productivity gurus. “Why can’t you?”

Aside from the utter silliness of each of us having a Lear in our heads just waiting for a once-a-century plague to break out, I have been shocked to find so…

Cognitive load explained using ducks

I’m playing this game on my phone called Clusterduck where you try to get ducks to lay eggs to make other ducks.

And it got me thinking about cognitive load.

Vacation, have to get away

Welcome to August, 2021, the point by which the optimistic among us had hoped we’d reach herd immunity from COVID-19 here in the United States, thanks to abundantly available vaccines and a public tired of people dying.

A user experience in content management that I could live without

Back in the summer of 2005 when I was still a web technical support rep, still studying for my master’s and running out of time for both, I decided it was time to convert my website from something I was manually…

A distraction

The editors are having an absolutely shit month, including death, disease, and just overall shit.

So here are two distractions. They’re not much but they’re all I’ve got energy for right now.

Unseen sunrises

It’s been the kind of year that you look back on and say “yeah, that was the high water mark, but we made it through” — or at least that’s what you hope to say.

All these years
 Of commitments and careers
 And we’re all up to our ears in fear and doubt
 And water flowing…

April, 2021

You’re exhausted because we’re in a pandemic.

• Because we’re in a pandemic and schools aren’t back to normal.
• Because we’re in a pandemic and our employers seem to have forgotten we’re in a pandemic when they set their 2021 goals.

Keeping the core running

In April of 2020, CGP Gray posted the following video: