It’s definitely the “focus long enough” thing that’s hard. I can force myself to concentrate if I tell myself I only have to do it for a minute or two at a time. 
Before you read the rest of this, I’ll just admit now I don’t have a good answer.
Not to be overly philosophical, but I’m not sure why I do anything. I don’t know why I get out of bed, why I bother to shower, why I work out, or why I go for walks. I don’t have to. I don’t want to either, at least not before I begin.
Part of it is just a general feeling that “I should” because it’s good for me in some way even if it isn’t clear how. And if I don’t try it’s an admission that I’ve given in to depression. One thing these particular books have in common is that they’re written by people who are successful and passionate about what they do, and write that way. I wish some of that would rub off on me.
To try to give more specific reasons, I’m interested in food because I’m tired of oatmeal and peanut butter and jam on toast for breakfast. But if I’m going to cook, I’d like more than just recipes. Like what are my materials and their properties and how do they interact under different conditions of temperature, pressure and time? What tools and techniques exist and how do they work? That is, I want to get a good base of knowledge about the subject even if I never end up cooking any very fancy dishes.
I like math and physics because I always have I guess. When I was a kid, the Wright brothers and Edison and Einstein were my heroes and later, Richard Feynman and Freeman Dyson. In engineering, the math and physics education is practical but not necessarily what you need to understand things like the foundations of quantum mechanics. That’s given me a slight insecurity that nags at me so I read this stuff to some degree to assuage that.
To an extent, the same is true for the Python book but I would like to write something simple to find and delete not-quite-duplicate music files from my drives. (I have thousands of mp3s.) I don’t necessarily have to read a book to do this, but again I’d prefer to have a little more background knowledge.
Maybe the real answer to the “Why?” question is in Sapolsky’s book and it’s something like “Free will doesn’t exist, I don’t have a choice.” I’ll see in a thousand pages or so.
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This is a toxic impulse I’ve struggled with.
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EmDrive
Google keeps sending me email about the EmDrive. They really, really want me to know and acknowledge that it’s dead. Ok, message received. RIP EmDrive.
Last week I was walking along this road, which is one-way for vehicle traffic. Pedestrians and bicyclists get the other half. I was passed by a Tesla going the wrong way, which happens. People get confused occasionally. Or they’re dicks. This guy had a vanity plate that read To Mars. Unlikely to be the big dick himself because it was a Utah plate, but still.
Utah, btw, is the Beehive State.
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Should be called the paper wasp hive state.
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The state highway signs look like piles of poo.
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EmDrive
WAIT. The news of the death of EmDrive may be premature!
The inventor says he had looked at the design in the recent studies and told them it wouldn’t produce thrust. The researchers added a dielectric section at the pointy end of the resonant cavity. This was supposed to increase thrust if any were produced. But Shawyer says he told them they hadn’t done this correctly and it was a bad idea to try it in a replication.
In any case, DARPA is going ahead with their own research, so hold the funeral.
Pic is from a few days ago. The crowd had thinned out somewhat, but earlier there were hordes of people walking through each other’s posed shots in tuxedos, gowns and sexy outfits but few masks. I stayed off the track.
Haven’t gone for a walk since. It got cold again. Maybe today.
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In business school this is called vertical integration I believe.
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We’re finally doing a memorial for my friend who died last summer. I’ve been looking through old photographs and scanning prints and diving through archived digital stuff. I found out I’m a terrible photographer and the first digital cameras were pretty bad.
I also came across some photoshop (GIMP) things I did a long time ago.
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Thee Kings was an underrated movie. Maybe the only movie ever made of Iraq War Part I?
Who remembers this epic scene of George Clooney and Ice Cube trying to get the Kurds hyped for George HW Bush?
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Doug Lee! Lol memories.
He was from Calgary too!
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It is a great movie.
Here’s another shop. There were some others but they seem to have got lost.
I think Barry supposedly had a crush on Evelyn. I mean sure, why not.
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I painted a little too. I did a caption contest in the zoo. Mike Haven won a $10 contribution to charity with “Christmas dinner isn’t what it used to be.” IIRC
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Kitchen Confidential
I finished a book!
Bourdain was a charming guy. But also kind of an asshole; this is not a revelation since that’s what he called himself. We could’ve been friends, I think.
The book is entertaining. That’s despite the fact that it sometimes seems like just long lists of job titles, famous chefs, restaurants, locations, ingredients, techniques, processes, and dishes I know nothing about. There’s enough scandalous behavior and four letter words to spice it up. It’s even a little too spicy, at times. Like what’s the point of invoking Cagney and Lacey just to insult someone as being uglier than the uglier of the two “after they bulked up to cruiserweight”?
He had disdain for celebrity chefs, even though he became one himself. But he respected Julia Child and Jacques Pepin, who basically invented the concept. (And watching old TV cooking shows, I can see why. It’s funny to watch professional cooks, in the presence of those two, answering simple questions even I know the answer to completely seriously and laughing at little in-jokes that aren’t really in. Julia: And you’re using real vanilla, not the imitation kind? Guest: Yes, not that horrid stuff! Julia: You can never go wrong by using more butter! Guest: Haha, no.)
The best part was learning what it’s really like in a kitchen when the work is going on. The characters and their interactions. People getting in each other’s way. Insults and curses flying. Yelling. Slamming of dishes, pans, doors. Minor injuries. Reminds me a lot of what it was like on a construction site. The fact that English is not the only language being used and you have to learn some Spanish. Going without sleep and showing up hungover or drunk. That the most important thing is showing up. On time. The fact that a lot of people can’t do that for long. The possibility of not getting paid and of not being able to pay bills. The likelihood of eventual business bankruptcy. You have to be crazy or desperate to do it.
I’ve already forgotten exactly how he put it, but he liked good ingredients, honest food, well prepared. Something like that. If in my cooking adventures I can do that occasionally, I’ll call it a success and maybe imagine having a beer with Tony Bourdain.
I signed up for an Edx course called Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science. The books I’ve been reading are supposed to cover this but they’re kind of lame when it comes to science. Half-baked (ha) analogies and even conceptual errors, ugh. Not that they aren’t worthwhile as cookbooks, just that they fall short of what’s advertised. The course has a companion book that looks interesting. They also use On Science and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen as a reference, which seems fairly encyclopedic in form and length.
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