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In preparation for our trip to Greece, I was thinking of movies I could watch with my eldest. The idea, along with a reading list, is to fill his head with history/culture and build anticipation. He’s 14-15, so I’m leaning more toward action/battles/greek gods/etc. Here’s what I came up with: Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief (2010) Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013) Troy (2004) Alexander (2004) 300 (2006) Clash of the Titans (2011) Wrath of the Titans (2012) Immortals (2011) Hercules (2014) That’s a good start. ...

Like most (all?) families, we take tons of photos and videos. Mostly of our kids. Mostly on holidays. And we typically holiday 1-2 months per year. Therefore, we have hundreds of new photos each year. I back-up our family photos once every year or two. This involves: Syncing photos from both my and my wife’s phones with the Photo app on my workstation Exporting all new photos (since last update) to a folder. Zip the folder of photos Upload to S3. Therefore, we have 3 versions of the photos: the phones, my workstation, and the cloud. ...

I’m preparing for a trip to Greece. As such, I’ve been sniffing around for good travel memoirs. Specifically a memoir or travel log. Not a fictional travel love story. There are zillions on Amazon. And not just party stories from the islands in the Aegean. Boring. I picked three: The Colossus of Maroussi, Henry Miller Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece, Patrick Leigh Fermor. Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, Patrick Leigh Fermor. Why these. A general focus on the mainland, history, and great writing. ...

In primary school, by eldest son loved the “Percy Jackson” books by Rick Riordan. Even now, they will be a fun/quick re-read for him when he’s looking for a comfort-read. These books gave him an interest in ancient Greece. I’ve purchased a few books for him over the years to kindle the interest, e.g.: 300, Frank Miller Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold, Stephen Fry. Circe, Madeline Miller. The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller. Lore Olympus, Rachel Smythe. And I’m sure I’ll buy more. Probably the rest of Stephen Fry’s series. ...

I read “Notes on Being a Man” over the weekend. Good story telling. Good tips. I’m always trying to think hard about the lessons, ideas, memories to jam into the heads of my son’s. Exercise and working out is a big one. “Boys should be strong” is something my wife and I say to them often. At home and more recently my eldest has been hitting the gym 3-4 times a week. We also have a stack of dumbbells and a work plan sitting in their rumpus that I and my youngest make use of daily. Making exercise/being strong a habit will be a big deal, and being strong/fit as teenagers will help a ton for health/confidence/etc. ...

I finished watching “A House of Dynamite” on Netflix last night. Oh man. What a movie. I don’t remember being so stressed out watching a movie for a long time. I also don’t recall the last time I watched such an “adult” movie. Thank god. It feels like most of the movies that wash up are for kids/teenagers. It’s nice to see something tense and difficult. Makes me want to go back and watch Zero Dark Thirty (same director) or Sicario (another deeply tense movie). ...

I finished “The Ape that Understood the Universe” (Steve Stewart-Williams, 2018) this week. A good book on evolutionary psychology, probably the best I’ve read in years. Anyway, there was a piece at the end talking through the evolution of culture and memes, and the “Protestant Work Ethic” (PWE) as a meme and its effect. Very cool idea. So, here it is: Protestant work ethic, Wikipedia. It’s not a thing per se, but a theory by the sociologist Max Weber. It’s well named I guess and became a thing. A meme/memeplex. ...

As part of my Quake 2 Bot Archive project, I’ve been doing research into old quake bot websites. I gather the research in markdown so I can re-trace my steps later, and also for good file provenance and complete mod coverage for the archive. For example: Quake II Bot Research Anyway, this lead into into capturing links to old collections of Quake2 mod tutorials and bot tutorials. For example: Quake II Code Tutorials Damn it. ...

Warren Buffett had a quote along the lines of: if you only had one car for the rest of your how would you look after it… It was a thought exercise and analogy for how you should look after your body. The paraphrase of the quote from chatgp5 is: Imagine you had a car and it was the only car you would ever have in your life. You would maintain it carefully and treat it like a treasure. Well, you only get one body and one mind — take care of them. ...

I read “LAN Party” last week: LAN Party: Inside the Multiplayer Revolution, GoodReads. More here: LAN Party, Read-Only Memory. It’s more of a photo book with occasional essays and interviews. I went to a lot of LAN parties in high school (circa 1995-1998, a couple after this) and it was awesome. I ended up hosting many parties because I had a ton of network cards, cables, and space. The best lan parties were the all day affairs. The worst were overnight/all night as nothing is fun when you’re sleep deprived. ...