Updated March 10, 2025

**Last updated:** 10 Mar, 2025 This is a /now page, listing out the stuff that's going on with me at the moment. If you have your own site, you should make one too. What I’m listening to: ---------------------- * **The Beach Boys** - _Surf's Up_ * **Blondie** - _Parallel Lines_ * **Scott Walker** - _Scott 2_ * Loads and loads of revisions by **The Reflex** (I strongly recommend joining his Patreon) What I’m reading: ----------------- I maintain an archive of the books I read over on The Storygraph. Here's my current selection: * **All The Light We Cannot See** by Anthony Doerr · Brilliant. I loved _Cloud Cuckoo Land_ a few years ago and this is just as compelling. * **Ayoade On Top** by Richard Ayoade · This is not as light and breezy as I'd hoped. * **Private Eye** What I’m watching: ------------------ * **Planes, Trains and Automobiles** * **Runaway Jury** * **Severance** * **Mad Men** * **Paradise** · Thank goodness this finished. What a load of nonsense. * **Big Boys** * **Bob's Burgers** Other things I’m enjoying: -------------------------- * Taking my nephew on big adventures to Oxford * Planning this year's summer holiday * Getting near to Springtime. Just a few weeks left... Current status: ---------------

Updated February 13, 2025

* A service to generate a podcast from a RSS feed using text-to-speech. * A version of Buffer for Mastodon. * Instapaper * Chrome Extension to add “Add to Instapaper” links to lobste.rs. * Chrome Extension to add “Add to Instapaper” links to feedly. Fitness / Health ---------------- * Self hosted version of MyFitnessPal. Others’ Ideas Pages ------------------- * Jonathan Borichevskiy * Alexey Guzey * Gwern * James McMurray (Updated February 13, 2025 )

Updated February 12, 2025

Here's a list of * Self-host my blog using a setup that uses Markdown files and git * Run a Gemini capsule * Self-host a guestbook for my blog * Sign blog posts and pages with PGP Last updated 2025-02-12. Inspired by Artem Tyurin's /ideas page.

Updated March 11, 2025

Here's the list of things that I'm currently doing! What I'm working on ------------------- * Revising my Johnny.Decimal system What I’m reading ---------------- * Fanfiction, again * Inclusive Design Patterns by Heydon Pickering What I’m watching ----------------- * Arcane * Dandadan * My Hero Academia What I’m listening to --------------------- * Satellites by The Script What I'm playing ---------------- * Vampire Survivors * Sun Haven * Fallen London * Granblue Fantasy Last updated 2025-03-11. Inspired by Derek Sivers' /now page. If you have your own website, you should make one, too. View the /now garden!

Updated March 10, 2025

Updated on Monday March 10th, 2025. Currently Doing --------------- * I’m currently writing a book about my electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Current Projects ---------------- * Writing helpful essays here on what has worked for me in life. See recently published below. * I operate a web agency on referrals only since 1999. * I’m an artist known as Chr1stopher * Created some markdown projects for certain tracking I do in markdown text: One Big Text File Markdown Journal, Home Manual Markdown, Customer Relationship Management Markdown, and Gardening Project Managment Markdown. Previous Projects ----------------- See Projects for a list of projects. Popular Essays -------------- * How Smart Notes Transformed My Productivity and Well-being * Completing the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die Challenge: A Musical Journey * Are High School Dropouts More Successful? * Boost Your Content Production Game: Essential Apps and Tools for 2025! - I update yearly with my essential apps Recently Published ------------------ * Wrote a tribute The Digital Canary: Arthur Firstenberg’s Legacy of Electromagnetic Awareness * Wrote a new essay Success is Built in Baby Steps: Why Overnight Success is a Myth * Wrote a new essay The Power of Letting Go: Why Not Caring What Others Think is One of Life’s Greatest Lessons * Published a new poem Live Your Best Life * Published a new poem My Bed Is A Spaceship * Published a new poem Peace Broke Out Everywhere * Reviewed a good book Why Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh-t is a Must-Read for Aspiring Writers: Lessons from a Marketing and Screenwriting Pro * Wrote a poem Forests Are For Rest * Wrote a review Mastering Startup Equity: A Review of The Slicing Pie Handbook for Fair and Sustainable Partnerships * Updated my robots.txt file to disallow bad bots and AI crawlers and turned on AI bot blocker in Cloudflare as well. Reading ------- * Grow A New Brain * What This Comedian Said Will Shock You by Bill Maher. So far I really like it. I review some books and all my past books I’ve read are listed on my GoodReads profile. Listening --------- * Looking forward to the new album “Equilibrium” by sing-songwriter Waves Rush In coming out in April. * Enjoying the new album “Blackbird and the Sun of October” by Federico Albanese. * Love the new Buddha Bar album. * Enjoying the new Tycho album - Infinite Health. * New Pearl Jam album Dark Matter is great. I recommend the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die challenge. You can see my rated albums. I enjoyed it so much I wrote an entire essay about it. And check out my profile on Apple Music where I listen to music. Watched ------- * I’m currently watching Dune: Prophecy (TV Series 2024– ) - Season 1 - IMDb * Interesting movie Wonderland * Fun Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes * Good, but not a huge fan of Dune: Part Two * Enjoyed Dark Matter - fun sci-fi My past movie ratings on IMDb.

Updated March 10, 2025

I'm a professor in the computer science department at American University, with a research focus on artificial intelligence (AI). My main area is AI & games. This includes technical research on game playing as a paradigmatic example of sequential decision-making; design-support work using AI for automated and semi-automated design; and conceptual work on formal models of games' mechanical and meaning-making elements. Recently I've been looking into how to harness the strengths of large language models (LLMs) while constraining their tendency towards generating hallucinated and otherwise undesired outputs. My strategy (with many collaborators) has been to use the LLM as one component of a larger AI system. I also try to keep up with (and teach, and occasionally publish) across computer science. Besides AI, I'm particularly interested in symbolic logic, programming languages, theory of computation, computer art, computer music, and computer-assisted design. **Background**: I did my B.S. in Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College, where I was influenced onto my current research path by Belinda Thom, Jim Marshall, and Melissa O'Neill; and my Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where my thesis advisors were Michael Mateas and Charles Isbell. I subsequently worked in various roles at the University of California Santa Cruz, the IT University of Copenhagen (Denmark), and Falmouth University (UK), before coming to AU. **Teaching at AU**: I most frequently teach Artificial Intelligence (CSC-468/668) and Programming Languages (CSC-421/621). I have also taught Game Development (GAME-615), Operating Systems (CSC-465/665), and several special-topics courses (CSC-496/696), most recently on generative AI. **News**: * March 10, 2025: In Gothenburg, Sweden for the 2nd work week on our international collaboration grant for AI game design * February 25, 2025: Talk on Language Model Crossover in the AU Math/Stat colloquium * January 13, 2025: Designed a new special-topics class on Applications of Generative AI for Spring 2025 * November 28, 2024: New paper on Language Model Crossover published in _ACM TELO_ * \[older news...\] **Research**: * Publications * Also at DBLP and Google Scholar * Projects & collaborators * Professional activities * An occasional blog * Paper-reading log **Contact**: * Email: mnelson@american.edu * GitHub: anadrome * GitHub org: NelsonAU

Updated January 27, 2025

Ideas ----- _Ideas, concepts, planned projects._ Last updated: January 27, 2025 My brain is really good in producing new ideas and sometimes obsessing over them for a short while. Usually though, the ideas will never come to fruition, so this page documents at least some of them for later. If you look through this list and one of the ideas stands out to you, please push my motivation by telling me about it. Even more so if you want to collaborate! Create/Build/Implement a/an... ------------------------------ * Fetching bookmarks from Linkding via API key on every build of this page * Events page for Vuejs events, similar to events.vuejs.org, but with a focus on discoverability * Integrations for (imho) essential services into Vimb. This would be mainly bookmarks via Linkding, passwords via Bitwarden and tab/history sync (via FFSync). * Fediverse enabled Event hub, like Mobilizon, but with an UI similar to Luma. Try out... ---------- * Kagi Websearch - but I don't like that they are yet another Silicon Valley startup * Bridgy Fed to bridge all my social media together

Updated March 3, 2025

##### Last updated on March 3, 2025 This is a public list of ideas that I would like to work on someday. This is a copy of the ideas note I have in my Obsidian vault, where I jot down interesting projects, concepts, and thoughts that I find intriguing and might want to explore in the future. Since it is not practically possible for anyone to work on every idea they have, I thought it would be better to make this note public so that someone else might build it someday. Ideas that I’m currently working on are crossed out and have been moved to my projects page. Against each idea, I’ve added a short description to provide more context. If you are interested in any of the ideas mentioned below and want to work on them or collaborate with me, feel free to contact me. In case any of the ideas already exist, please let me know, and I will cross them out with a backlink to the project. **Vape with a Puff Limiter**A vape that lets you set the maximum number of puffs you can have in a day via an app or something! Looks like another person has thought about the same .**A Search Engine for Personal Blogs**I’m unable to search for content in personal blogs on google or any other search engine. Kagi small web is there, but it’s not personal blog specific.**A World Travel Lottery**A lottery with the grand prize as a fully-expensed, world travel package to visit n countries across all continents**Cricket Guard Line Projector**If you watch cricket, you can see batsmen often marking guard lines against the stumps by asking the umpire. Why can’t we have a laser projection of the stumps controlled by the umpire with a remote?**A cheap running tracker**There are multiple running trackers that you can attach to shoes, like Stryd , but these are quite expensive. Why is it so hard to make cheaper running trackers?**A platform to read both sides of an argument.**A moderated platform where a dedicated page is present for popular topics, and people can read about both sides of the argument.**Indian News Aggregator with relevance**India is struggling with misinformation and rigged news. The magnitude is quite high, considering the huge population, the demographics, and the rising internet penetration. A platform like News Minimalist that removes clickbait titles and filters relevant news would be useful for India.**Global Fish Database in different languages**Fishnames are tricky if you travel around the world. Within a country itself, fish names would be different. A global database of fishnames in all different languages would be great!**Bookmark for Videos & Podcasts**I wish there was a tool to record a particular timestamp on a video or a podcast so that I can watch it from the saved timestamp when I resume, rather than scrolling and finding the time.**Strava for Writers**Strava is a great tool to track your activities. As a writer, such a tool would be great to see the number of words written every day and also get a sneak peek at others’ writings.**About Me Collection**I love reading the About Me sections of various personal blogs. A curated list of the best about pages would be cool.**Evergreen Hosting** People put a lot of effort into their blogs, and most often, after the person passes away, these blogs go obsolete. How about a service that you can pay for one-time or in installments, ensuring that your blog stays live forever? _Update: I wrote about in detail here . Also, checkout Digital Legacy Trust by Derek Sivers._ Comments -------- ##### Leave a comment below. All comments are moderated and will appear after approval. Your email, if provided, is optional and won't be shared or used to send any spam. If your comment requires a personal response beyond a public reply, I will reach out to you via email. Comments are static, with no notifications or backlinks.

Updated March 10, 2025

ARRAY '25 CfP ------------- Here's the CFP for ARRAY '25 this year! Dear all We are organising ARRAY'25 which Speaking at Functional Conf 2025, January 23 - 24 ------------------------------------------------- Functional Conf 2025 - Designing your Data: The Bread and Butter of APL Performance I'll be speaking at APL SEEDS '24 Registration Open ------------------------------- APL Seeds ’24 - DyalogDyalog If you're new to APL or interested in learning more about the language, Advent of Code Review Stream ---------------------------- We'll be doing a review of the Advent of Code problems on the 18th! Advent of Code 2024 ------------------- This year I'm doing Advent of Code with the goal of trying to at least get some points. Dyalog User Meeting Survey -------------------------- Survey Link This is a survey from Dyalog asking for feedback and thoughts on their User Meetings. If you' Speaking at LambdaConf 2024 (May) \[Limited Time Discount code\] ---------------------------------------------------------------- I'll be speaking at LambdaConf 2024 in May. We haven't finalized the exact talks that I& Suggestivity and Idioms in APL ------------------------------ Two major principles emerge in APL programming, suggestivity and idioms. I recently encountered a nice illustration of how these two Flat Program Organization: An Email Response -------------------------------------------- A fellow APLer, Tort, started an interesting email discussion with me, and one of his points was good enough that Thesis Correction: Sec. 3.7, Guard Lifting ------------------------------------------ I was thankfully informed by Douglas Mennella that the before and after diagrams for section 3.7 of my thesis

Updated March 10, 2025

I am a software consultant with over 20 years of experience. My interests include data processing, API integrations, infrastructure and observability, TDD/BDD and effective ways of testing, team leadership, and mentorship. I have worked with teams and clients from around the world, helping to build new applications from scratch and supporting maintenance work on large systems. I enjoy collaborating with people, offering help and inspiration, and experimenting with new ideas. Since 2009, I have been an active contributor and maintainer of various open-source software (OSS) projects. I am a former core team member of the DataMapper project, the creator of the popular Virtus gem, the creator and lead developer of the rom-rb project, the co-founder and core developer of dry-rb project and Hanami core team member. I write technical articles for my blog on topics such as programming in Elixir and Ruby, interesting OSS projects, testing techniques, refactoring, and database management. Additionally, I am an occasional conference speaker, having had the privilege to present at events like RedDotRubyConf, EuRuCamp, RubyNation, BaRuCo (now FullStackFest), RubyConf Australia, and Brighton Ruby. In 2017, I was honored as a final nominee for the Ruby Prize award by the Ruby Association.

Updated March 10, 2025

Visit our contact page for information on business contacts. ### **Our Policies and Standards** Visit our policies and standards page. ### Comment section policies Visit our comment section policies page. ### Bylaws Read our bylaws. ### Masthead and Board of Directors Visit our leadership page. ### Publishing The Stanford Daily publishes Monday through Friday during the academic year and maintains a circulation of 4,000 to more than 200 locations on and around the main Stanford main campus. The Daily publishes several special issues every year, including a New Student Orientation issue, a Big Game issue and a Commencement issue. ### The Corporation The Stanford Daily newspaper is the primary holding of The Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation. Founded in 1973, The Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation operates as a California non-profit corporation headed by the paper’s editor-in-chief and business manager. ### History of The Daily The Stanford Daily is the independent, student-run newspaper of Stanford University. The Daily was originally founded as a small pamphlet known as The Daily Palo Alto in 1892 and has been a campus fixture ever since. The Daily strives to serve the Stanford community with relevant, unbiased journalism and provides its editorial, tech and business staffs with unparalleled educational opportunities. The Daily became independent of Stanford University in 1973 after a years-long clash with the administration spurred in part by disagreements over The Daily’s coverage of anti-Vietnam War protests. In particular, a strongly worded 1970 op-ed in the newspaper entitled “Snitches and Oppression,” penned by Diarmuid McGuire M.A. ’73, drew concerns from University administrators that the school might be held liable for any violence incited by the article. Independence for The Daily was thus a logical conclusion for both sides: The Daily’s disentanglement from the University would make it impossible for the University to attempt to influence reporting through financial withholding or other means, and the University’s disentanglement from The Daily would release it of any potential liability for content published in the newspaper. Thus, in 1973, The Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation was incorporated in Santa Clara County as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Independence wasn’t the only consequence of The Daily’s coverage of campus antiwar protests; the publication also drew national attention when it sued James Zurcher, the chief of the Palo Alto Police Department, following a surprise search of The Daily’s offices for photographic evidence of protestors that the student-journalists and legal counsel deemed to be in violation of the First and Fourth Amendments. After a district court and court of appeals ruled in favor of The Daily, the case, _Zurcher v. Stanford Daily_, was brought to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1978, with the nation’s highest court ruling 5-3 in favor of Zurcher. The ensuing outcry among journalists and the public led to Congress’s passage of the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which established the requirement of a subpoena to search newsrooms for unpublished materials. With the launch of its website in 1995, The Daily became one of the first college newspapers publishing on the Internet. The site is live and continuously updated throughout the year. It features content from the print edition, along with special Web-only content often including live blogs of sporting events and major campus events. The Daily moved out of its old offices in the Storke Publications Building to its new home at the Lorry I. Lokey Stanford Daily Building in 2007, thanks to the generosity of Lorry I. Lokey ’49 and hundreds of other benefactors, which would not have been possible without the titanic effort of Arthur Charles Hoffman ’73 MBA ’76.

Updated March 10, 2025

(This is a now page.) Personal -------- After 13 years living in and around Half Moon Bay, CA, we moved to Temecula, CA in 2023. Elisabeth’s family lives in the area, and we had a very limited support network there. Plus it’s easy for me to work remote, and escaping the Bay Area cost of living was nice. The local politics are kinda awful, but the schools are highly rated, and we found a church we really like. We bought a house we like in a really great neighborhood, and have been keeping ourselves busy with remodel projects and trying not to kill the 150 rose bushes or dozen fruit trees on the property. I’m currently reading _BiblioTech_ by John Palfrey and _Exit Strategy_ by Martha Wells. Professional ------------ I’ve been working as a software engineer at Tailscale since May 2022. I’ve worked on a bunch of different things, but am currently focused on identity-related projects.