This was put together by the wonderful Cadence Chen, and I’m really excited to slap it on the cover of my almost-done book.

The background

My son is turning 14 soon, and I thought it’d be nice to write him a book that I originally called “What Your Dad Believes.” Because it wouldn’t be sold to other people, I wouldn’t need to put the normal stuff on it like a title or my name. I just needed content and a cover.

Somewhere along the way, I discovered old essays I wrote when I was 21. So I decided to change the title…

About 18 months ago, I created a make-believe band that plays make-believe shows around the world. There are no actual songs, lyrics, or music. I come up with song names, a tour itinerary, and an algorithm produces the setlist for each night. Read more about the algorithm here and there’s a very long explanation here if you’d like to learn more about the band.

Today I’d like to talk about the green, red, and black dots up above. There are 11 rows, which represent the first 11 songs the band ever wrote. (Now they’re up to 104 songs) The columns…

Here are a few stories about my friend Mike, who recently passed away.

[Update: a memorial page has been posted. Go there to find ways to help or be notified of further information.]

His reputation preceded him

When I went to work at frog design, I noticed everyone kept talking about this client named Mike. He was apparently a great industrial designer who had done some cool futuristic stuff at Nokia. But more than that, he made people happy. He loved telling jokes, he loved the people he worked with, and that love rubbed off on my coworkers. “Mike’s great,” people told me. “You’ve…

Many people have a self-critical voice in their ear all the time. “Why’d you do that? You sounded dumb. People are going to realise you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re so awkward. People probably don’t like you.” On and on it goes. The less confident you are, the louder the voice gets. And even when someone you trust and respect pays you a compliment, you can’t believe it. So we deflect compliments, because they feel strange. They don’t fit the stories we tell ourself, where we’re imperfect and need to constantly improve.

But here’s a tough thought exercise…

This eight-part series snuck up on me. I figured I could just play it in the background and learn more about some 70s music. But a staggering number of famous songs all come from that one year. It’s nuts, and makes for compelling watching.

Then there’s the footage from the time. Whether showing protests, crumbling inner cities, or backstage parties, it’s all fascinating to watch. The video equipment of the time was able to capture at a pretty high quality, and there was a strong strain of photojournalism of the time, so there’s a gold mine of interesting content.

Finally…

Weather in Wellington is pretty similar to Seattle. Both places have an outsized reputation for rainy weather that’s not backed up by the data. Did you know Seattle is the 32nd most rainy city in America, behind places like St. Louis and Baltimore? Did you know it rains as much in Wellington, New Zealand as Houston, Texas? But don’t tell the locals in either city, because a lot of their local pride is tied up in having the worst weather in the country.

That said, it really has been raining a lot lately. From the highway today, I saw the…

I wrote the section in bold into GPT-3 and it came up with some pretty horrible stuff. Trigger warning: everything. Seriously.

This is a short story about Hammish and Angela, two teenagers who fall in love and then have a dramatic ending. The story should be touching and sad. The story goes like this:

Angela is a 16-year-old girl who is the daughter of an alcoholic and is a victim of child abuse. Hammish is also 16, and he is a victim of child abuse also. They both escaped from their homes and met each other. As they began to…

I was one of one hundred designers on Windows Phone and got to work on lots of interesting projects. One of my assignments was working on Internet Explorer for Windows Phone, though interally we just called it Browser. One of the most difficult challenges we faced was what I called the Octopus Tab Problem: If someone goes to a website and clicks eight tabs, how can you give them quick access to each page they’ve loaded? It’s easy on desktop, but on mobile it’s really hard. Back in 2012, no one had cracked it.

We were surprised to learn…